plywood for furniture in the 1940s

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There is an interesting group of chairs in the gallery at Designmuseum Danmark - most dating from the 1940s - that show how Danish designers and furniture makers experimented with using plywood.

Through the 1930s there was pressure on Danish furniture manufacturers to produce cheaper furniture, in part by moving production from the small workshops of the cabinet makers to factories and in part by exploiting new materials and by developing new production techniques for making more furniture in quantity.

Plywood could be produced with timber from relatively thin and relatively quick-growing trees and the sheets were light and easy to cut to shape; could be bent to a curve and, when pinned or glued over a wooden frame, plywood could be used for facing large cupboards or for the bottoms of drawers.

A patent was taken out in the 1790s for making a thin board of wood from layers of veneer that were stuck together with glue but the veneer was cut by hand and relatively rough although strong … alternate sheets of veneer are turned through ninety degrees so that the natural grain runs first along and then across, so the final board has considerably more strength than a comparable thickness cut from a single piece of timber.

Plywood was not produced on an industrial scale until the 1860s and the word plywood is recorded first in print in the US in 1917.

Thonet in Vienna in the second half of the 19th century made light-weight chairs with steam-bent frames that had seats with either woven cane or just a simple round piece of plywood that dropped into a rebate in the frame that formed the seat. Front legs and back posts were bolted to the seat frame and a second steam-bent hoop of wood was fixed just below the seat, instead of stretchers, to hold the legs vertical and again this was bolted or screwed in place. By using screws or bolts - rather than the traditional mortice-and-tenon joins of the cabinetmaker - the chairs could be shipped as separate parts and then assembled on delivery by someone with just basic skills.

By the late 1930s and through the war - through the 1940s - good timber for making furniture was expensive and not readily available so plywood was used, with a light frame, particularly for wardrobes or cupboards. In England this was often referred to as utility furniture.

From the 1920s furniture makers began to shape and bend plywood into more complicated and curved shapes. It was used in the construction of aeroplanes and - before glass fibre and plastics were developed -  for the bodywork of cars and marine plywood, using water resistant glue to bond the layers, was used to build boats.* If the glued layers are held under pressure in a shaped former or mould as they dry, then the piece retains that curve or shape after it is removed from the former.

In Finland, Alvar Alto designed furniture in the late 1920s and early 1930s where a plywood seat and back in a single piece was bent into an elaborate and sinuous curve and in the United States, in the early 1940s, Charles and Ray Eames designed the first chairs where plywood was curved in two planes to form a complex shell.

 

note:

 * I was taught to sail in a small dinghy - a Mirror - made in the school workshops from a kit with parts in marine plywood stitched together with wire and with the joins covered with tape. They were designed in 1962 with Barry Bucknell - a TV DIY expert. Over 70,000 were made and many raced. Bucknell lived in St Mawes - a beautiful fishing village in Cornwall - with his house looking over the beach so I guess that was where the link between sailing and TV DIY could be found. I'm not sure that design is exactly the right word as out on open water it felt a bit like being in a floating wardrobe. The dingy took its name from the British daily newspaper although I can't remember why … perhaps they published the drawings. The only excuse for including a footnote on Bucknell in a blog about Scandinavian design is that in his TV series he showed people how to do things like disguise an old door that had sunk panels by covering it with sheets of plywood - or worse with hardboard - to create a clean Scandinavian look …… on the cheap. At it's peak, his weekly TV show had 7 million regular viewers so the sort of numbers that style bloggers now dream about.

 

Chair by Søren Hansen 1930

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chair photographed at Designmuseum Danmark

 
L1240319.jpg
 

chair by the Viennese company Thonet - made from the middle of the 19th century onwards

it could be transported in separate parts and assembled at the destination

the seat is cane rather than plywood

Fritz Hansen Eftf produced a number of chairs in bentwood and plywood between 1928 and 1948. Generally, these bentwood chairs in beech are referred to as DAN chairs. 

This chair from 1930 was designed by Søren Hansen - the grandson of Fritz Hansen who founded the furniture company. It takes as a starting point the famous chairs by Thonet - the Austrian company - that date from the 19th century but simplifies the form. In both chairs, the back posts and the back rest are made from a single piece of steam-bent wood but, in the Danish version, the back rest forms a more generous and perhaps an even-more extravagant loop. 

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Chair by Søren Hansen 1943

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chair in Designmuseum Danmark

 

From the late 1920s and through into the 1940s, the furniture manufacturer Fritz Hansen Etft experimented with new materials and tried out new manufacturing methods. They made chairs with frames in steamed and bent wood, producing several chairs based on chairs produced by Thonet in Austria from the middle of the 19th century with a bentwood frame for the seat and bentwood legs with a plain seat cut from plywood and without upholstery.

This chair, designed by Søren Hansen, uses plywood in a much more ambitious and much more obvious and prominent way. 

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Portex Arm Chair  by Peter Hvidt and Orla Mølgaard-Nielsen  1945

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The Portex range of furniture was designed to be exported, so there was a desk where the legs could be unscrewed and shipped in the desk drawer, although this chair, actually, was shipped assembled. The designers themselves explained exactly why and in doing so explain functional aspects of the chair that were taken into account in its design.

“While we realized the necessity of being able to dismantle or fold up cupboards, tables and beds during transport, we did not dare use these principles for chairs. A chair screwed together that might be quite stiff to begin with will never in the long run be able to stand up to the stress that it will invariably be subjected to. A chair must often bear great weight, must be able to tolerate being tilted, and will be moved more or less brutally throughout the day. The screw would work in its hole under these stresses, and in the end will loosen. The stacking principle was chosen since it has the advantage that the chair could be assembled and finished at the factory. The disadvantage was that the known stacking chairs shows clear signs that they can be stacked.”

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Shell Chair FH1936  by Hans Wegner 1948

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This is really a combination of types with a fairly conventional frame of legs and stretchers that forms a cradle for the thick curved plywood seat and the well proportioned and curved back rest that is also in thick plywood.

The side stretchers are shaped and curve down at the ends and the legs stop short of the underside of the seat. This is described by some critics as a cantilevered seat. The use of thicker plywood for the seat means that the normal seat frame can be omitted completely so this is plywood used in a more sophisticated way for more expensive furniture.

designed by Hans Wegner
made by Fritz Hansen Eftf

frame beech
seat and back surface veneer teak

height: 70 cm 
width: 73 cm 
depth: 60 cm
height of seat: 38 cm 

 

Chair by Børge Mogensen 1949

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As with the almost contemporary FH1936 chair by Hans Wegner - this chair has an elegant frame in wood that forms a base for the plywood back … here with a back in relatively thin plywood that was cut to shape and sections were  cut out so that the back could be bent round to a more pronounced curve and then held in place with tabs that are glued down into slots in the seat.

Faced in cherry, this was not cheap plywood but presumably it was presented at the Cabinetmakers' Exhibition to prove that plywood was an appropriate material for more expensive furniture.

designed by Børge Mogensen (1914-1972)
made by Erhard Rasmussen

shown at the Cabinetmakers' Exhibition in 1949

cherry and teak

height: 75 cm
width: 47 cm
depth: 54 cm
height of seat: 39 cm

 

Metropolitanstolen / Metropolitan Chair by Axel Bender Madsen and Ejnar Larsen 1949

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The frame of the seat is interesting with side pieces that have a very pronounced inward curve. When seen from a normal viewpoint this reduces the bulk of the frame and emphasises the thin piece of plywood that forms the seat and makes the chair look lighter and more elegant.

Here the back and the arm rests of the chair are in a single piece of shaped and curved plywood. This is cut from a single sheet and bent and held in place by screws driven down into the tops of the legs with the screw heads covered by plugs of wood.

The shape is reminiscent of the changes in plane of the back and arm rests of The Chair (The Round Chair) by Hans Wegner from the same year although in that chair the back rest and arms of The Chair are in solid timber - rather than in plywood -  cut with the sections joined to achieve the propeller like twist in the shape. *

 

 

designed by Axel Madsen (1916-2000) and Ejnar Larsen (1917-1987)
made by Ludvig Pontoppidan

shown at the Cabinetmakers' Exhibition in 1949

height: 76 cm
width: 56 cm
depth: 44 cm
height of seat: 44 cm

note

 * The first version of The Chair had a seat woven in cane but a year later a version with an upholstered seat was produced. What is interesting is that in that relatively expensive chair, the seat was not given traditional upholstery that would have either been taken over the frame of the seat, destroying the clean lines and elegant curves, or it might have had an upholstered cushion dropped into the frame instead of the cane work but that would have been rather balky. The solution was to use a sheet of plywood resting on simple metal tabs fixed on the inside edge of the frame just below the top with a padding over the plywood - presumably presumably in the original chair with hair but now foam - that was then covered with leather.

 

Stangestolen / The Snake Chair by Poul Henningsen 1932

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Having looked at and written about a number of Danish chairs that were designed in the 20th century, it seemed important to include this chair - The Snake Chair designed by Poul Henningsen - not because it is remotely representative - it is actually perversely unique - but because it is distinctly modern in the materials it used.

With a single coil of tubular steel to support the seat and back, it breaks with almost all conventions, but, curiously, it also appears to be 'of it's period'. 

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design classic: PH 5 lamp by Poul Henningsen 1958

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With his designs for lamps and light fittings, Poul Henningsen sought to control electric light to produce even and glare-free illumination. His drawings show detailed studies of how light was reflected back off surfaces and it is said that he had a study or work room at his home in Hellerup where the walls were painted black so that he could trace the way light spreads out or, for pendant lamps, he could see how different curves on metal or glass shades could be used to direct some light down and some of the light up to reflect back off the ceiling.

He established his own independent studio in 1919 and with the Danish lighting company Louis Poulsen his first lamps were shown in Paris in 1925. Through the next 40 years he produced a series of lights that used a combination of shallow, curved shades, in either metal or in glass, that focus the light down or out at an angle across a wider area and these were combined with coloured baffles to change the colour tone of the light or he used a series of flaps or petals, again of glass or metal, to hide the light source and control the direction and angle of the beams of light.

These different lamps might appear to be about appearance - about style and fashion - or, with the very large lights, about drama but in fact they allowed for such a precise control of artificial light that they were used in work spaces and in museums and galleries - used in the first trade exhibition on the opening of Forum in 1926 and in the exhibition spaces and staircases of the Design Museum in Copenhagen - and even, on long stems set at an angle, installed in ranks to floodlight indoor tennis courts.

The PH 5 was first produced by Louis Poulsen in 1958 and is a large lamp with five metal shades 267mm high and with an overall diameter of 500mm but it has been so popular in Denmark that it has been claimed that every Danish family has at least one PH 5 light.

 

 

Poul Henningsen was also a writer and critic and when the PH 5 was released he wrote with self-mocking humour: 

“For a generation I have believed that consideration for the consumer and common sense would prevail, but now I have become a fatalist. I have accepted fate, and with Louis Poulsen´s permission I have designed a PH fixture which can be used with any kind of light source, Christmas lights and 100 W metal-filament bulbs. Although a fluorescent tube would be too much to ask in the existing form!” 

 

Louis Poulsen

note:

The PH 5 lamp in the photographs has slightly warped shades and some small dents in the edge because it has been used in at least four different apartments - at least four as I bought it at an antique market attracted by its unusual deep grey colour. Over the years it has had two trips across the North Sea and has been dropped at least once by removal men. Needless to say, new lights from Louis Poulsen are perfect - you have to add your own marks to make it yours.

 

surely a chair is just a chair?

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the teaching collection at KADK - Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademis Skoler for Arkitektur, Design og Konservering

 

If the title of this post had been something like "a discussion of residual symbols of power and poverty apparent in the design of seating in the period of transition from independent cabinetmakers to industrial production in modern Denmark" then many, quite reasonably, would not have swiped right.

But ……..

In the west, and particularly in northern Europe, although we seem to live in an increasingly secular age and tend to downplay or dismiss symbolism, it still plays a strong part in how our society is organised and functions. Of all the types of furniture we use, it is chairs that seem to be charged with the most meanings.

A photograph of chairs set on either side of a fireplace are still a strong symbol of hospitality suggesting the warmth and comfort of the hearth at the centre of a home but much less warm and cosy …..

A legal court or parliament sits or is sitting and the chair of the judge or the Speaker of the parliament is the focus of the whole room.

In a university professors have a Chair in their faculty and, in a business meeting, to 'take the chair' is to take control.

Companies have leaders or heads but they are usually referred to as the 'chairman' of the board of the company and when a new director is appointed they have a place on the board but it is usually described in English as 'a seat on the board.'

A Cathedral is the Seat of the Bishop and the See of the Bishop or Holy See is from sedes as in sedia or chair and ironically that is the same starting point for the English word sedentary from spending too much time in a chair. The actual chair of the bishop, some form of obvious throne, or chair on steroids, is given emphasis by being placed under a canopy as a symbol of their authority as if having the biggest and best and most expensive chair in the place was not enough.

Grand Medieval households were often arranged with separate tables for different levels or hierarchies within the family and its servants for dining and the high or posh table had at the centre a large chair for the owner or 'head' of the house while long tables in the 'body' of hall would have had benches for less important people.

In English politics most official photographs of government ministers at cabinet meetings show the Prime Minister sitting at the centre of the long side as a symbol of collective government … although that does not appear to be working too well at the moment.

Chairs can be used to draw someone into a group - so you invite someone to 'pull up a chair' or to 'just grab a seat' if you are distracted by something or someone else but want to keep them in the room. But you can do just the opposite … put them in their place or make them feel excluded by making someone stand while you sit.

And simply sitting down on a chair or standing up can be used to control a complex situation so in a legal court people might have to stand when the judge enters the room and cannot sit down again until after they are seated and when someone in charge stands up it can signal the end of a meeting.

Even in the home this sort of control can be used so a child behaving badly might be made to get down from the table or as a punishment made to stay at the table.

Chairs and seats reflect status so someone might want the 'best seats in the house' when they go to the theatre or economise by booking something up in the cheap seats.

You can stand behind someone who is sitting down and lean over them to intimidate them.

Or you can give them or put them in the hot seat.

And not just the chairs themselves but the arrangement of chairs can be important so lines of chairs or better an arc of chairs can focus attention on a lectern and even in democratic Denmark the cathedral in Copenhagen has an interesting arrangement with a royal pew up in a gallery, above everyone else, looking directly across at the preacher standing, but not sitting but with a canopy so both his words and his status are clear so this is a play of power on who is sitting above whom.

Think of the game for children where there is one chair less than the number of players who circle until music stops and the one who fails to get a chair is out and a chair is removed before the game continues until it is just two fighting, often literally fighting, for that last chair.

To 'send someone to The Chair' means executing them in an electric chair and when someone is interrogated they might be tied to the chair or simply held under a spotlight with the interrogators walking around …. Just think about the closing scene in the film Brazil and you can see the symbolism of power and complete loss in a single isolated chair.

 

On the whole, of course, modern Danish chairs are not quite that powerful but then Wegner's Round Chair had an important role in the Nixon Kennedy interview, almost certainly the most prestigious commission won by Finn Juhl was to design chairs for the United Nations building in New York and there is that iconic photo of Christine Keeler, the maker of spies and the breaker of political reputations, naked and sitting the wrong way round on a Chair 7 … OK it's a fake version of the Jacobsen chair but oddly that makes it somehow even more symbolic.

why so many posts here recently about chairs?

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the Danish chair - an international affair - at Designmuseum Danmark in Copenhagen

 

 

Generally design blogs are about the latest and the newest and too often yesterday's post is old news … so even if there are categories and tags on a site there is often little reason for clicking or swiping back through past posts.

But there is now a lot of information and a lot of photographs on this site so is it possible to make stronger and clearer links to pull some of this together so it is accessible and is it possible to have a better structure on the site for slotting in future posts?

And its not just about linking information but thinking about how to present more information and more photographs than are published on a typical blog.

On-line sites have a phenomenal advantage over printed books because it's possible, in one place, to provide different levels of information, deeper within the site or just a link away, so there can be a lot more material for wider context or to explore a subject in greater depth with extra information or additional images that put a design into the context of local or social history or the context of work by other designers or in the specific context of a designer's total work.

So it's not just the what but the when and the how and the why.

Nor is it always easy to get access to works to take photographs for a blog …  do a Google search for a well-known piece of furniture - say the Peacock Chair by Hans Wegner - and there will usually be two pages of roughly the same view and they are either publicity images from the manufacturer or from a magazine or they are an image more like a quick holiday-snap and rarely are there any meaningful details. There are exceptions of course … sites with amazing photos … but not many.

Spending a lot of time at Designmuseum Danmark in Copenhagen to look, really look, at the display of their collection of modern chairs, it was clear immediately that this is an amazing resource. The chairs are raised up off the floor but can be examined close up and are well lit against a neutral background. The arrangement of the display shows just how many types and forms of chair there are and you can see, through the 20th century, how architects and designers were trying out ideas or see how they were inspired by the possibilities of a new material or a new technique of production

The museum typography is also important because it gives a framework for the subject and it prompts analysis …. it's absolutely fine to stand in front of a piece of furniture and say that's nice - I like that - or to say I really don't like that - and then move on but once you start asking why you like it or why it is good or bad or why it is interesting or why it is weirdly unusual or why, curiously, it reminds you of something else, then you should be able to find out more.

So, as an experiment, there has been a bit of a blitz here to look at a selection of the chairs but in more detail and with more photographs than on most blogs and to experiment a bit with ways of presenting the information, images and observations.

There is a new time line or chronological list for one obvious way to index the information and photographs.

Of course a time line is not the only way or the best way to arrange different objects but the easiest as long as you put that piece in that year in a wider context: it is not enough to know which year which designer designed which piece of furniture but was this a young designer at the start of their career or someone well experienced but trying something new or someone stuck in a rut and producing the nth version of the same thing in as many years?

These are chairs that come from the classic period of Danish design or were designed in the preliminary stages … so chairs that mark important stages that lead to the designs of the 1950s and 1960s.

From here, the plan is to look at more furniture in more detail - more chairs, more recent chairs - and to talk to designers and manufacturers about how and why and when a design came about and to look at other types of furniture in similar detail.

country furniture

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country furniture in buildings at Frilandsmuseet - the open-air museum north of Copenhagen

 

In Denmark traditional country furniture is called bondemøbler or peasant furniture and in England cottage or farmhouse furniture or by some academics vernacular furniture.

This is the chairs and tables and cupboards and beds made before the industrial and before the retail revolutions of the 19th century by families themselves or by local carpenters who would use local materials - so where possible oak or, as oak became less easily available and more expensive, then other local timber including ash or pine. The use of expensive foreign timber is rare in country furniture, for obvious reasons, and highly finished and polished surfaces or veneer were beyond the experience of local makers unless they worked in a relatively large market town and had a larger workshop. As a consequence wood was left untreated or furniture was either finished with simple wax or oil, to protect the surfaces, or could be painted and decorated.

Upholstery was also an expensive job that required a specialist so seats were usually simply flat wood planks or possibly wood hollowed out but rush and cane or even rope were used woven over a frame for chair seats. Mattresses or simple seat cushions could be made from a tough fabric with a filling of straw or animal hair.

living in a single room - Den Gamle By - the open-air museum in Aarhus - note the bed in a drawer under the settle or bench

 

Wood for chair and table legs and for the spindles of a chair back or for stretchers between the legs - to make a stronger frame - could be turned on a simple lathe and in England these lathes were often set up out in the beech woods and the turned legs and spindles brought into town where the chairs would be assembled. Turning legs and spindles for furniture required the same tools and skills needed for making the spokes of wood wheels for carts and carriages. With turned legs and spindles the fixing was also relatively simple with the end tapered and then pushed tightly into a drilled hole and that avoided having to cut complicated mortice-and-tenon joints that needed careful work with a saw and a chisel that was best done on a proper work bench where the wood could be held securely in place.

Through into the 19th century - and even into the early 20th century - local blacksmiths could make hinges and catches and nails if they were needed for the wood furniture.

Wealthier farmers in a village or clergymen who wanted more elaborate furniture for their posher homes or for the parish church bought more sophisticated and expensive furniture from nearby towns or even from abroad and then the features and styles of those imported pieces might be copied or roughly imitated by local craftsmen.

These relatively simple and 'honest' country chairs … honest meaning straightforward and unpretentious … were and still are appreciated even in the town or city. In part, they were cheaper for workers to buy but in the late 19th and early 20th century people were moving into Copenhagen to work in the port and work in new industries and may well have brought furniture from where they had lived, out in the countryside or smaller towns, or they deliberately sought out furniture that reminded them of distant family or distant lives.

It was the unpretentious modesty and simple techniques, that looked back to straightforward local carpentry, rather than fancy foreign fashions, that meant that people saw these well-made but basic and relatively light but strong chairs with turned legs and rush seats as appropriate for churches.

Good country furniture can be seen in appropriate room settings in the open air museums in Denmark and it is worth spending time looking at these pieces to see where modern designers have taken and adapted ideas or, even more interesting, to see types of furniture that are rarely made now such as the clothes press or plate rack or even the bed built into a cupboard or the large plank chests for bedding.

Features from good country furniture can be seen in the sophisticated work of major designers of the modern period including the Nyborg Library Chairs by Hans Wegner, the 'People's Chair' by Børge Mogensen and, of course, in the Church Chair by Kaare Klint.

Church Chair by Kaare Klint

Chair for Nyborg Library by Hans Wegner

an everyday chair

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These chairs were designed by the Copenhagen City Architect's Office, about 1930, for use in school offices.

They are not exactly what would have been found in a kitchen in Vesterbro or at a table in an apartment in Islands Brygge but they are pine and they are painted and the designs are straightforward with a simple arrangement of stretchers to strengthen the framework of the legs and simple plain wood back rests that are either fixed across or fixed between the uprights of the back.

Dining table and chairs in birch designed by Viggo Sten Møller and made by Adolf Jørgensen for the Cabinetmakers' Exhibition in 1929. The setting had a P.H. lamp over the table.

 

 
 

Over the last month or so, posts here have focused on a number of chairs from the 20th century that are design classics and all, in different ways, examples of new styles or examples of experiments with new forms and new manufacturing techniques. However, the problem is, this gives an impression that every Danish chair represents a point in time on a rapid, inevitable and ongoing progression of design innovations.

But if you look at photographs of homes from the 20th century or even photographs from the annual exhibition of the Cabinetmakers' Guild Furniture exhibitions that were held from 1927 through to 1966 - where craftsmen were actually competing to produce the latest and the best - you see a good number of strangely old-fashioned chairs and much of the best modern furniture was produced in small quantities or, in some cases, made only when commissioned and many of the designs would have been considered expensive, even at the time, so well beyond the budget of an ordinary working family.

Of course, for offices and schools and factories - let alone for ordinary families in ordinary homes in new apartments in the city in the 1920s and 1930s and 1940s - and then on through the period of so-called classic Danish furniture in the 1950s and 1960s - Denmark actually had to produce ordinary chairs or, at least, chairs that were designed and made to be robust and affordable rather than being primarily award winning, memorable or collectable.

So part of the story of the development of modern design in Denmark is the story of designers trying to produce ordinary chairs that were well designed and well made.

One reason - perhaps the main reason - for the annual exhibition of the work of cabinetmakers was so that these craftsmen could show they could compete with the emerging furniture factories, so proposals from cabinetmakers were  "submitted for both cheap and somewhat more expensive furniture" for the exhibition.

For the Cabinetmakers' Exhibition in 1929 Viggo Sten Møller and Hans Hansen designed furniture for a two-room apartment with a compact dining tables and chairs made by Adolf Jørgensen.

In 1932 Møller became the editor of the trade journal Nyt Tidsskrift for Kunstindustri and alongside technical articles he introduced pieces on colour schemes, lighting and textiles and from the architect Marinus Andersen he commissioned an article about furnishing a small apartment for a couple about to get married.

The cabinetmakers began to introduce a broader range of furniture so pieces specifically for children or in 1939 designs for a study for a student designed by Børge Mogensen and Aage Windeleff. In the exhibition in 1962 there was even a large kitchen designed Henning Jensen and Hanne and Torben Valeur that was made by Christensen & Larsen although it was clear that this would have been an exceptional and expensive project … so hardly a flat-pack job.

But it was not just cabinetmakers who were trying to improve the design of furniture that could be sold at a reasonable price. Around 1930, Magnus L Stephensen was asked to furnish two test apartments for a public housing scheme at Ryparken, designed by Povl Baumann, that was based on a budget that was realistic for a young working family but he found only one factory and one traditional workshop in the city who could provide furniture he considered good enough within that budget.

Dan-stol (left) from 1930 by Søren Hansen the grandson of the founder of Fritz Hansen

Bentwood chair model 234 (above) from Fritz Hansen by Magnus Stephensen (1903-1984)

 

Magnus Stephensen produced designs for the furniture makers Fritz Hansen.

Perhaps the first factory chair and, in some ways, one of the most popular everyday chair (in terms of the numbers produced) was the Café Chair in bent wood from the Viennese manufacturer Thonet that was designed in the middle of the 19th century. Methods of steam bending wood, rather like the development of plywood, had not been common in Denmark but from the 1920s Fritz Hansen realised the potential of both. The grandson of the founder of the Fritz Hansen designed a Dan-stole for the company in 1930 - a rationalisation and simplification of the Café Chair - and then Magnus Stephensen designed the chair Model 234 that combined a bent-wood frame with a more comfortable shaped and curved back rest in thin wood. DAN was a general term used for these chairs in steam-bent beech.

Co-op Denmark started to manufacture high quality but inexpensive furniture in 1940 with the architect and planner Steen Eiler Rasmussen providing advice as a consultant. He had curated an exhibition of applied art in 1932 to look at well-designed everyday objects. 

 

Chairs and a dining table designed by Børge Mogensen and made by the cabinetmaker Erhard Rasmussen in pear wood for the Cabinetmakers' Exhibition in 1944. Very simple square frame with upholstered pad for seat and simple curve of thin wood for back support presumably screwed to back uprights with plugs over the fixing in contrasting wood. But note that the back supports are curved in section so not actually that basic and because the legs are relatively thin in section then tere are stretchers to strengthen the frame but, rather unusual, to front and back but not to the sides between the front and back legs.

 

Børge Mogensen was appointed to be head of the design department at FDB Møbler (Fællesforeningen for Danmarks Brugsforeninger or Commonwealth of Danish Confederations of Users …  part of the Danish COOP) and in 1944 he furnished a test apartment in their store on Frederiksborggade in Copenhagen. In the sitting room there was a pine table, an Ercol style chair and a version of an English Windsor Chair at a desk that was a wall unit with a front flap that dropped down as a surface for writing at and on the floor their was simple rush matting.

Rasmussen published an article in the magazine Andelsbladet to explain the work of this better furniture campaign. The apartment in the store had "realistic rooms and floors, walls, ceilings, doors and windows - all with the dimensions that are found in ordinary little homes." … and it was described as a 'housing laboratory.'

"The new furniture is so ordinary and direct that one would almost believe it had made itself. But this is a virtue. It is not seductive and overwhelming like the pieces we see in advertisements, but then there is also hope that people will not grow tired of them in the long run."

Several well known or established designers in that classic period - through the 1950s and 1960s - produced chairs that were priced for an ordinary buyer … so Hans Wegner, Poul Volther, Mogens Koch, Jørgen Bækmark along with Børge Mogensen all designed chairs for FDB Møbler.

 

J39 / Folkestolen / People's Chair designed in 1947 for FDB by Børge Mogensen

 

Now all the major design and furniture companies have a range of basic or straightforward but well-made chairs and the launch of a new chair can be a major event and some companies produce major classics designed in the 1950s and 1960s where the price can be kept low by the rationalisation of manufacturing methods or simply by the scale of production and making it possible to have a choice from dozens and dozens of different well-designed chairs that are well made and reasonably priced.

J48 designed by Poul Volther for FDB Møbler and still made for the Danish Coop. This is a good everyday chair but is also a sort of cross-over design inspired by simple country furniture but given a real sense of modern style with a choice of strong colours.

chair made in Copenhagen by Søren Ulrich … the style is reminiscent of chairs from the 1930s and 1940s and would be a good choice for a kitchen table or small dining room and appropriate for one of the apartments in the city dating from the early 20th century

 

dining chairs by Inoda+Sveje

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The Japanese designer Kyoko Inoda and the Danish designer Niels Sveje - who have their studio and showroom in Milan - have produced two dining chairs - DC9 and DC10 - in partnership with the Japanese cabinetmakers Miyazaki.

Back in September, during the London Design Festival, they took part in a talk and discussion at Aram's store in Covent Garden with Daniel Aram and with Marcus Fairs - the founder and editor of the online design magazine Dezeen. The event was streamed live on the Dezeen site but is still available to view on the Dezeen Facebook page. They made important points about the links between Danish and Japanese design and about the importance of both craftsmanship and quality in furniture production and about how designers and craftsmen can work in a close partnership.

This year has seen a number of exhibitions and events in Copenhagen that have marked the centennial anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic links between Japan and Denmark and it was inevitable that similarities between modern Japanese design and modern Danish design and the influence of each country on the art and design of the other has been discussed.

Perhaps the most obvious characteristics found in modern design in both countries are the appreciation of natural materials and the importance placed on craftsmanship and to these Daniel Aram added that both countries have a 'design rigour' … meant presumably in the sense of being thorough or meticulous. He elaborated on that point by observing that Japanese and Danish designers and craftsmen seem to master materials in order to produce beautiful objects.

In the session at the Aram store, Niels Sveje explained how their partnership with the Japanese cabinetmakers developed.

Miyazaki are a small company - with about 25 people - but all parts of production are done in house and everyone works on furniture that is produced in batches so there is a concentration or focus that helps to ensure quality control. As with PP Møbler in Denmark and Nikari in Finland, Miyazaki have taken on board modern technology and, again, not to reduce the cost of production but so quality can be improved or where something can be done in their workshop now that was not possible with traditional handcraft techniques.

Niels Sveje explained how they worked with the workshop in Japan. Initial designs were produced with a 3D design package but the next stage was to make a project type and that was then modified in the workshop because "ergonomics is something you have to feel with your body." That produced a chair that was, in effect, a one-off sculpture, and they had to develop their own scanner to take that on to a design that could be put into production. The result is a chair where shape and form and tactile qualities combine with innovative technical details for how the wood is cut to shape and the parts finished and joined together.

Such a meticulous design sequence meant a development period of two years but Niels Sveje justified that in the conclusion of the session when he said that his aim, when designing the chair, was for a piece of furniture that could be in production for at least his own lifetime.

Throughout the discussion there are fascinating observations about design and aesthetics … so all parts of the chair were to be tactile for the person using the chair and sitting in the chair and the sensation was compared with wearing a shirt - specifically in the sense that with a shirt, in direct contact with the body, in the way a chair is in direct contact, you feel all parts - the inside and outside - and surfaces cannot be separated. The design of a chair has to work with 'natural curves' so the lines are, he explained, where you expect them to be.

Daniel Aram added practical but positive comments about shipping costs and delivery times but perhaps the most important point was made by Niels Sveje when he said that the owner of the Japanese workshop was himself a cabinetmaker and was in the workshop every day … and that is different "from when you have an accountant leading the company." He concluded by saying that the design and production of the chair was a mutual achievement so it "couldn't work if you took one of us out of the equation."

DC10 by INODA+SVEJE

MIYAZAKI

DEZEEN on line … the discussion at the Aram Store

 

Lattice Chair by Hans Wegner 1942

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chair photographed at the exhibition on the work of Hans Wegner at Designmuseum Danmark in 2014

This chair is a variation on the form of the Red Chair by Kaare Klint but lighter with turned legs - round rather than square in cross section - and a lighter shallower upholstered seat but as a whole, and given the quality of the craftsmanship and the exotic wood used, it must have been aimed at a fairly wealthy middle-class market.

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