Henri-Jean; she has imbibed the details of Artifort’s history over the years. “It was the time of bikinis; it showed the forms so nicely. But not only did we have to figure out how to create the forms, but also the material, which at that time was really new for the furniture industry. That was the international breakthrough for Artifort.”

Instead of attaching the fabric to the furniture section by section, as with traditional upholstery, Paulin worked with Artifort to develop a method more akin to dressmaking: creating patterns, cutting the pieces out and sewing them together. Working the foam covered forms — Paulin describes them as “round, almost feminine” — into the finished cover, an elastic blend of wool and polyester, was, he says, like a woman shimmying into a bathing suit. In 1966, Paulin’s furniture collection was shown in the exhibition “The Face of a Company: Artifort” at the Center for Industrial Design in Amsterdam. It attracted the attention of the international press, catapulting Artifort into the international arena. One person who was thrilled to discover Paulin’s designs was American fabric designer Jack Lenor Larsen. He had also created stretch upholstery fabric, but found no furniture companies with designs to accommodate it. In 1967, he partnered with Artifort to develop Momentum, a print Caprolan nylon fabric, to upholster Paulin’s chairs, which were then available only in solid colors. He added a foam backing for support and to better secure the fabric to the chair. Momentum’s kinetic red and blue swirls brought a new vitality to Paulin’s forms. “Every major furniture producer is working only to satisfy the needs of the middle market,” Larsen complained in a December 6, 1967, article in the New York Times. “They should be spending some time and money experimenting with new ideas in technology which are bound to change the shape of furniture.”

At an exhibition in 1961, Kho Liang Ie saw a chair by the young Geoffrey Harcourt, who was traveling in the United States on a scholarship from London’s Royal College of Art. On his return home to England, he found an invitation from Liang Ie inviting him to design for Artifort. He jumped at the chance. “There were few opportunities available in England to design anything of the quality and innovation required by Artifort,” he recalls. “In the absence of a