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Yngvar Sandström
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Yngvar Sandström (1931-2009) graduated from what is now HDK-Valand at the University of Gothenburg in 1948 and went directly into furniture work at NK Verkstäder in Nyköping, the production arm of the Stockholm department store Nordiska Kompaniet. His years there placed him at the center of the Triva series, an NK furniture program that grew out of Elias Svedberg's flat-pack concept from 1944 and expanded through the postwar decades into a broader range of domestic furniture under the NK-bo label.
Sandström contributed several pieces to the Triva series, most recognisably the Tokyo bench, a slatted oak bench produced at Nyköping and date-stamped in October 1964. He also designed teak and oak side tables and bedside tables for the collection, all sharing the series' characteristic Scandinavian restraint: honest materials, simple joinery, and forms that aged without effort.
In 1960, Sandström co-founded S-design in Malmö with Alf Svensson, who had previously worked with DUX. The studio took on commissions from several manufacturers, including Bergbom Belysning, Miljöexpo, and Nässjö Stolfabrik, and collaborated with producers of rattan furniture in the Philippines. The most technically ambitious project of the partnership was the Galaxy lounge chair for DUX, launched in 1971. Made of injection-moulded plastic with a tall, enveloping back, the Galaxy required a custom production tool built over the course of a year at a cost of half a million kronor. The chair became an international success and is the design most closely associated with both Sandström and Svensson. Its space-age silhouette has made it a fixture in discussions of late twentieth-century Scandinavian plastic furniture.
Sandström's auction presence spans both periods of his career. Tables and storage pieces from the Triva series appear at Swedish houses including Crafoord Malmö and SAV Sickla, with a Triva coffee table reaching 4,277 EUR and a dining table from the same series selling for 3,200 SEK. The Tokyo bench has sold for around 4,000 SEK. Galaxy chairs, often listed jointly under Svensson and Sandström, attract collectors of Space Age design at auctions across Sweden and internationally.