The place that launched a thousand chairs
Klaus Nienkamper used to run the hottest speakeasy in town.
Ancient history, for sure, but clearly also the clay of nostalgia, as the godfather of modern furniture in this country let it slip when we had sat down to yak this week.
Fully in a mood to look back — sporting his face-habit of sangria-red specs, and speaking in that mellifluous voice once described by Azure as the “the aural equivalent of fine brandy” — he brought up the party den that once topped his storied storefront at 300 King St. E.
“It was a lot of fun,” he remembers now, it having been one of those necessity/mother/ invention things when he was squeezed financially in those beginning days of his career.
“A lot of prominent people used to come,” he goes on, describing the creative swirl of that day and even namedropping “The Happy Hooker,” a.k.a. the celebrated call girl Xaviera Hollander, who wrote a world-famous memoir by that alliterative title, and lived in Toronto for a spell in the ’70s when she wed a Canadian antiques dealer.
“She was there a lot,” he beams. “Nothing was open after 11 p.m. in Toronto back then.”
Sitting in that very storefront now, where his son, Klaus Jr. — the Justin to his Pierre — runs the retail end of things, while dad remains on top of innovation at his factory in the east end, the 73-year-old’s hold on the city, mythological and otherwise, hangs firm.
Having colonized a stretch of King St. eons before it would become either a playground of homeware or an aerie of lofts — “you could park your car in the middle of the street, and no one would care” — his longevity is all the more impressive when you consider that a) he was spreading the gospel of modern even before the CN Tower was built, b) many family-tilting brands are long, long gone (Eaton’s, ahem), and c) his storefront endures in a town where change is the only constant. (If you’re under 40, ask a Baby Boomer to tell you about redhot restaurants such as Winston’s and Bemelmans.)
That aura was more than manifest at a party held in May to mark Klaus by Nienkamper’s 50th anniversary — a buoyant celebration that was as much of a reunion as you’re gonna get of the country’s design intelligentsia, including the likes of Karim Rashid and the boys behind Yabu Pushelberg (both of whom toil on the global stage, and credit Klaus Sr. for early inspiration). Having collaborated with everyone from Daniel Libeskind on down, and furnished for prime ministers, royalty and society alike, the man of a thousand chairs is only too happy to keep the commemoration going.
It started with a car wash. Well, kinda. After leaving the German town where his moth- er ran a musty antique business — paging Freud! — a 20year-old Nienkamper sailed to Canada with $36 in his pocket, and little command of English. His first job? Servicing automobiles, indeed.
“It was where the TIFF Lightbox is now,” he confirms, adding, “I was the right rear vacuum cleaner person.”
He picked up some English there, and also an inkling about customer service he carries to this day. Years later, he would wind up providing furniture for that same carwash owner. “He didn’t remember me.”
Get Nienkamper going on some of his more famous projects — see: the interiors at the Canadian embassy in Washington D.C. — and his memory gushes.
About two of his more fa- mous patrons — former French president Charles de Gaulle, and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II — he has a healthy sense of the absurd about both experiences. For the former, he was assigned the task of making him a bed, during Montreal’s Expo 67, and what a long bed it was, considering the president’s six-foot-five frame.
“He never slept in it, though,” Nienkamper punchlines, recalling that it was during that visit when de Gaulle made his incendiary “Vive le Quebec Libre” speech, and was essentially “chased out of the country” when it sparked a diplomatic incident between Canada and France.
For the Queen — during the same festivities — he made a most handsome table for her to enjoy a lunch. Ultimately, though, it was covered up at the last minute with a white tablecloth, because “I was told the Queen doesn’t do placemats.” Well, then. Long story short: “I made a bed that de Gaulle never slept on, and a table that the Queen never saw.” Maybe she noticed the legs? “Maybe,” he murmurs. More royal luck was to be had when maven Hilary Weston commissioned a 40th birthday present for her friend Prince Charles: a polo-watching grounds chair. Conveniently foldable — ideal also for gind-rinking — it was a hit. Weston commissioned eight more of these chairs for her husband’s own polo team.
Asked about his enduring inspirations, and his answers are inevitable. Bauhaus is his bag. Eames is still It.
Forever moving the taste needle in this town — even while 85 per cent of his business comes these days from the American market — he regularly renews his creative energies at the Creemore, Ont., farm that he bolts to every weekend and that he shares with his wife and collaborator of more than 50 years, Beatrix. There, they breed Friesian horses.
“We have a horse carriage,” he sidebars.
Leave it to Rashid, his former protege, to sum up the former car washer and ex-speakeasy -operator: “He has that German DNA; a kind of precision,” but he also knows “design, and the history of design inside out. He brought that culture to Canada.”