Mid-Century Sideboard by Oswald Vermaercke, 1970s

Mid-Century Belgian furniture designer Oswald Vermaercke (b. 1926) is known for designs produced by the Belgian furniture firm V-Form. Not a lot of biographical information is available on Vermaercke, but it is known that he was the business manager and designer of V-Form. Located in Petegem, V-Form produced complete suites of furniture, which included sideboards , tables , and chairs , during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.

One of the most well-known of Vermaercke’s designs for V-Form is the minimal dining-room suite Paola (1959), named after the Belgian queen who married King Alfred II in the same year. Most of the furniture produced by V-Form in the 1950s and 1960s featured beautifully deep-grained veneers, for which Vermaercke personally traveled abroad to choose, resulting in teak and rosewood veneers of the highest quality. In the 1970s, however, Resisto Finish, a veneer alternative that was both cheap to produce and long-lasting, replaced veneer as the finish of choice in Vermaercke designs.

Unable to compete with larger international firms, V-Form went out of business in 1978. In 2003, Vermaercke donated historical V-Form archives to the Ghent Design Museum.