Furniture maker Klaus Nienkamper was a champion of contemporary Canadian design

Snagging the commission to furnish the commissioner-general’s suite in Moshe Safdie’s Habitat complex at Montreal’s Expo 67 was quite a coup for 26-year-old furniture jobber Klaus Nienkamper. He had sailed to Canada from his native Germany in 1960 with only $36 in his pocket, and eked out a living soon after as “right rear vacuum man” at Farb’s Car Wash on Toronto’s King Street West.

As Mr. Nienkamper recalled in his eponymous furniture company’s Festschrift, Nienkamper: 50 Years of Excellence from Design to Delivery, published in 2018, “I did not have a factory. My only asset was a station wagon, and I had everything produced in small shops in and around Toronto.”