Vintage U-450 Schrank von Jiri Jiroutek

Jiří Jiroutek is a Czech furniture and interior designer whose renown culls from his midcentury tenure at Interier Praha, during which he orchestrated the firm’s famed U-450 series of modular sideboards—today, perhaps the leading exemplar of Czech “Brussels Style” furniture. 

Born sometime around 1912 or 1913 (his specific birth date remains unpublished), Jiroutek spent his adolescence in the provincial Bohemia town of Chrudim, where he attended secondary school. Like seminal Czech industrial designer Jindrich Halabala, Jiroutek completed his professional studies at Prague’s Academy of Applied Arts (today, the Academy of Arts, Architecture & Design). In 1951, Jiroutek began his career at the just-born Interier Praha. In contrast to Halabala and the other midcentury Czech modernists, Jiroutek, it seems, never worked for the other prominent national furniture manufacturers like TON, and UP Závody. 

On the heels of early successes, Jiroutek became the head of design at Interier Praha in 1958 and soon after began work on the U-450 series. The designs were heavily inspired by the watershed ’58 Expo in Brussels, which moved Czech postwar design generally toward a “softer” modernism—one characterized by pastel colors, new geometries, and the use of modern materials like engineered composites, glass, and concrete. Jiroutek became know especially for the simple morphologies of oak-veneered sideboards and cabinets with sleekly color-blocked sliding doors and drawers.

Immensely popular, the U-450 series pushed Jiroutek and, subsequently, Interier Praha to focus mainly on the large-scale production of modular furniture. Onward into the 1970s—even after the design-stunting Prague Spring in 1968—Jiroutek continued to add new editions to his already robust oeuvre, contributing opaline glass tables, and armchairs, as well as entire kitchen suites (his KU-550 series) and living room suites (his U-550 series) sets to Interier Praha’s catalogue.

Founded in 1950, Czech furniture manufacturer Interier Praha was active at a vital moment in Czech design history and helped to transform the character of the region’s interiors alongside TON (the Czech wing of Thonet), UP Závody, Mücke-Melder, and more. Albeit obscured by few available historical details, the company was most saliently active in the 1960s, the decade during which it commissioned a number of enduring Bauhaus-inspired designs from legendary Czech modernist designers like Jiri Joroutek, Jindrich Halabala, Miroslav Navratil, and the duo Karel Kozelka and Antonin Kropacek.

Interier Praha’s catalogue included casegoods , tables , and variety of chairs  designed for both households and offices. The minimalist, often tubular steel designs reflected the influence of pioneering modernists like Le Corbusier, Mart Stam, Adolf Loos, Marcel Breuer and LLudwig Mies van der Rohe. Standout pieces include Kropacek and Kozelka’s armchairs and lounge chairs (ca. 1950s), which garnered silver medals at the Milano Triennale in 1944 and 1946, respectively; Jindřich Halabala’s HF11 cantilevered lounge chair (ca. 1950s); Jiří Jiroutek’s opaline glass coffee tables, and his ocher and neapolitan U-450 series of wood-veneered sideboards (both 1960s); as well as a few late career designs by Miroslav Navratil, including his classic green-upholstered daybed (ca. 1960s).

Interier Praha was liquidated in 2004.