Art historian Elisabeth Souvan has transformed her passion for vintage furniture into a thriving business with the opening of her new Tandlas store on Währinger Straße in Vienna's ninth district. The shop specializes in mid-century design furniture that Souvan personally restores, from 1950s Costela sofas by legendary designers Martin Eisler and Carlo Hauner to Art Deco chairs by Hugo Gorge, a contemporary of Josef Frank.
While Souvan's store isn't typically the kind of place for impulse purchases, sometimes customers surprise her. Recently, she placed a powder-pink armchair in the window display, and it sold within five minutes to a passerby who fell in love with the piece at first sight. The chair was a special Parliament armchair by Oskar Payer Decor, manufactured around 1955 specifically for the Austrian Parliament, though the comfortable velvet-covered chairs were also sold to the general public.
Souvan launched Tandlas (a play on the Viennese word "Tandler" meaning second-hand dealer) as an online shop in 2022, initially working with her brother. The business focused on high-quality second-hand items, primarily but not exclusively in mid-century design, including ice cream bowls, egg cups, lily porcelain services, and much more. Her brother has since moved on to focus on online marketing, leaving Souvan to expand the business into larger furniture pieces, which she ships throughout Europe with appropriate transport costs.
The journey to her current location involved some trial and error. A few years ago, Souvan had a small shop in Ottakring that didn't work well due to lack of foot traffic, though it now serves as her warehouse and workshop. That experience, which she calls a brief stopover, gave her a taste for retail that never left her. Her new location in the ninth district features a large, bright sales room perfect for displaying sofas, dining tables, dressers, serving carts, and armchairs.
While her focus remains clearly on mid-century design, many of the pieces are of Scandinavian origin, like a secretary desk by Børge Lerche for the Riis-Antonsen Møbelfabrik from the 1960s. However, Souvan explains that the abundance of Nordic furniture is somewhat coincidental: "Long-term, I'd like to focus on Austrian design, but as a second-hand dealer, it depends on what you can get."
In the early days, Souvan and her brother would travel from flea market to flea market and estate sale to estate sale – a love for flea markets they inherited from their father as children. Now she lacks the time for such expeditions and has built a network of people who professionally handle estate clearances, which is how she acquires many of her pieces. When items need restoration, Souvan usually does the work herself, though for very complex projects she engages a professional restorer.
Every item in the store, whether it's a compote dish, floor lamp, or serving cart, comes with an authenticity certificate from Souvan. "I research every single object that comes in," she says. Over the years, she has built a catalog of reference objects, and in most cases, she can definitively prove the origin and designer of pieces.
The window display that briefly featured the powder-pink Parliament chair now showcases a chandelier with its own interesting backstory. One evening, Souvan was browsing house listings on willhaben, an Austrian online marketplace. "I do this sometimes and imagine what it would be like to live there," she explains. She noticed the vintage furnishings in one house listing and spontaneously wrote to the real estate agent, saying she couldn't afford the house but might be interested in the furniture. The agent found the request amusing, connected her with the owners, they hit it off, and Souvan purchased the entire dining room setup including the chandelier.
Visitors to Tandlas often feel a sense of reverence for the freshly restored furniture pieces, hesitating to actually sit on the couch to try it out. Souvan encourages people not to have such inhibitions: "This isn't a museum. People should live with these objects and enjoy them. And almost everything can be repaired."
The enduring popularity of mid-century design, even among young people, stems from the fact that these pieces have a certain aura and patina while still fitting very well into modern interiors, according to Souvan. She sees no problem with combining a retro furniture piece in an Ikea living room: "I think every room needs something old. It makes it much more livable and has charm."
The Tandlas store is located at Währinger Straße 76 and is open Monday through Friday from 12 to 6 PM, as well as by appointment. Customers can also browse and purchase items through the online shop at www.tandlas.com, continuing the digital presence that launched Souvan's vintage design business.
