Charles Stendig

alt=Charles and Eleanore Stendig at the Stendig, Inc. showroom, New York City, c. 1970. Photographer unknown, Charles Stendig Collection, R & Company Archives. Charles and Eleanore Stendig at the Stendig, Inc. showroom, New York City, c. 1970. Photographer unknown, Charles Stendig Collection, R & Company Archives. Charles William Stendig (October 25, 1924 – February 11, 2024) was an American businessman and philanthropist who was the founder of Stendig, Inc. The company was active between 1955 and 1976 and imported a unique selection of modern European furniture to the United States, focusing on contract-grade pieces suitable for commercial use (such as libraries, colleges, hotels, and offices). Stendig was among the pioneers of the movement that would later become known as mid-century modern.

Early life Charles William Stendig was born in Brooklyn, New York, on October 25, 1924, the only child of a union electrician and a homemaker. He served in an airborne division of the American armed forces during World War II and later studied international business at New York University (NYU), the City College of New York (CCNY), and the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Stendig started his professional career as a "tail end" tradesman and eventually became a furniture road salesman, then a manufacturer's representative for several California furniture makers.

Career Stendig decided to start his own business in 1955. After a chance encounter at a bar, he connected with Finnish furniture company Asko, who invited him to Lahti, Finland, to work with the company's designers on developing marketable furniture to be sold on the American market. Joseph Carreiro, then Director of Dimensional and Interior Design at the Philadelphia College of Art (now University of the Arts), accompanied him on the trip as a design consultant, and shortly after that, Stendig, Inc. began importing Finnish furniture to the United States. The partnership lasted as long as Stendig was in business and included distribution agreements for works from Ilmari Tapiovaara, Tapio Wirkkala, and Eero Aarnio.

The company's first showroom was in midtown Manhattan in a brownstone building at 600 Madison Avenue, which opened in 1956. Stendig's wife Eleanore became the head of operations and stayed in the company until the couple's retirement.

That same year, Stendig negotiated a formal government invitation to travel to Communist Czechoslovakia, where one of the centenary Thonet bentwood furniture factories was located. This trip yielded him the right to import model B9 armchair, used by Le Corbusier in the 1925 Pavillon de l'Esprit Nouveau, and for which they found a signed mold at the Czech factory. often attributed to Josef Hoffmann, and four other models, which ultimately contributed to a widespread appreciation of these designs in the American market.

In 1960, Stendig met Dino Gavina, founder of Gavina SpA, a furniture factory in Bologna, Italy. Soon after, Gavina came to America and obtained the distribution rights to Marcel Breuer's Bauhaus-era designs, including the Cesca, Wassily, and Laccio chairs and tables.

Throughout the 1960s, Stendig gained access to several other important Italian manufacturers and became the major source for radical design for designers and architects. He acquired exclusive distribution rights for the American market to models made by Poltronova, which produced designs by Archizoom, Gae Aulenti, Ettore Sottsass, Superstudio, and Massimo Vignelli and his wife, Lella. which was a favorite for magazine photoshoots.

In the early 1970s, Stendig discovered Gufram, founded by the Gugliermetto brothers in Turin, and began importing the pop designs of Giuseppe Raimondi, Guido Drocco Franco Mello and Studio65, and others, In 1973, Ceretti-DeRossi-Rosso's Puffo stool and Piero Gilardi's foam carpets were added to the collection. Other designers represented by Stendig, Inc. over the years included the Swiss Ubald Klug, and has remained in print since.