Seat of resistance: Goldreich’s furniture honours activist parents

It’s never easy to grieve for one’s late parents. Israeli-born architect Amos Goldreich, the son of South African struggle hero Arthur Goldreich and Israeli designer Tamar de Shalit, has found a unique way to honour their prodigious life’s work.

Among hundreds of other projects, Arthur designed the sets for the iconic 1950s South African musical King Kong, featuring Miriam Makeba. Tamar was part of the team that created the courtroom for the Nazi Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem in 1961. Amos has used his parents’ designs to produce a range of stylish, high-end furniture in a tribute to their love story and creativity. The new brand is called TAMART, made up from the first letters of Tamar and Arthur’s names. It was named best new brand at the Monocle Design Awards, and made its international debut at an exhibition in Milan. The British-based Amos has now opened his permanent showroom for the furniture in Shoreditch, London.

“My mom passed away in 2009, and my dad in 2011,” Amos said. “The grieving process took quite a long time – 12 or 13 years. As part of it, I decided to form this company, TAMART, and the work feels like the final stage of the grieving process. It’s the end of one cycle, and the beginning of another. It’s a way of me honouring them and, strangely, wonderfully, it feels like I’m now collaborating with them.” This wasn’t something he was able to do when they were alive.

Arthur was born in South Africa, and fought in Israel’s War of Independence in 1948. He returned to South Africa, and became heavily involved in the struggle against apartheid. He rented Liliesleaf in Rivonia as a secret base for the then banned African National Congress (ANC), and moved his family there. He was captured in a police raid on the property in 1963, but managed to escape from custody with Harold Wolpe and two others. He made his way to Israel, where he settled, to become a major figure in the architecture, art, and design world in the fledgling state. He continued to work on theatre productions.

De Shalit was born and raised in Tel Aviv and studied in London, where she met Arthur. They collaborated throughout their lives. She was an accomplished designer in multiple genres including interiors, lighting, textiles, fashion, and jewellery, and also an influential interior architect.

Amos didn’t know that his parents had saved their design drawings in a shed they used as a studio. After their deaths, he found more than 10 000 items, plans, and projects. Nothing was properly archived in this treasure trove, but Amos set out to preserve this vibrant collection.

“I grew up knowing about a handful of their projects,” Amos said, “but I found hundreds more.” It took about five years to catalogue the archive, consisting of many hundreds of drawings, sketch books, letters, photographs, and negatives. Amos gifted the collection to the Israel Architecture Archive, which closed down recently. Amos retrieved his parents’ archive and brought it by boat to him in England, where he has lived since 1993.

“The collection has value as an historical document of the formation of Israel,” Amos said, “because they were very involved in the design scene from the late 1950s till the 1980s.” They designed public buildings on kibbutzim, Shimon Peres’s office, institutional buildings, and exclusive residential projects.

Amos hopes to sell the TAMART pieces in South Africa. “Although I wasn’t born in South Africa, I have a strong connection because of my father and growing up with his story.” African art ideas featured prominently in Arthur’s work.

“He was excited to go back to South Africa when Nelson Mandela was released. He was given back his passport. And he was happy that Liliesleaf was to become a museum, driven by Harold Wolpe’s son, Nic. But I know that the ANC had an issue with him because he chose to remain in Israel.”

Amos fondly remembers coming to South Africa in 2011 with his half-brother, Paul, to receive a posthumous human rights award to his father from the South African Jewish Board of Deputies.

“Sadly and shockingly,” he said, “my father worked on some of the kibbutzim in the south that were attacked on 7 October. I don’t know if the public buildings survived the attacks or not.”

He’s been asked whether the timing of the launch might provoke adverse reactions due to the war in Gaza. “It wasn’t an issue at all,” he said. “We’re a British brand with deep South African and Israel connections. I didn’t hide this.”

As a young architect, De Shalit was on the team that designed the courtroom and all the furniture for the Eichmann trial. The notorious Nazi had been kidnapped in Buenos Aires, Argentina, by Israel in 1960, and went on trial in Israel in 1961. This mesmerising trial laid bare the horrors of the Holocaust for Israelis. The modified courtroom was in a theatre – an apt setting for a grand performance of political drama. De Shalit designed the glass booth that Eichmann sat in, facing the witnesses. “She had told me about it,” Amos said, “but I had never seen the sketches, and that was kind of shocking. There is a ‘top secret’ stamp on them. My mother was a very private person who didn’t seek the limelight. My father was the opposite.”

An exhibition showcasing the archive was held in 2018. The idea of bringing their furniture designs to life began percolating for their son, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. He gave up his architecture studio to pursue TAMART full-time. “Their designs were never mass produced. They were always designed for specific projects. So it felt like an opportunity to manufacture them so the public could enjoy them.”

The TAMART collection made a splash in Milan, to critical acclaim, especially with its intriguing back-story. In the initial collection of 10 pieces, eight are from Arthur and Tamar’s designs, classical 1950s chairs and tables that remain in fashion, and two are Amos’s original designs, called the “Highgate Chairs”.

Further designs are to be released in the near future. And so, this creative family venture continues.