Karmstol by Edvard Thomsen 1930

This chair, designed in 1930 by Edvard Thomsen (1884-1980) is interesting because it has features that suggest that its design is transitional … in part looking back to the style of older chairs that were an interpretation of classical forms and historic styles but in part the chair incorporates modern ideas and modern joinery.

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chair by Edvard Thomsen in Designmuseum Danmark

the Shaker rocking chair in the collection at Designmuseum Danmark

 

Designmuseum Danmark gives this rocking chair from the United States a prominent place in the introduction at the entrance to their gallery of modern Danish chairs and so, by implication, an important place in the story of Danish furniture in the second half of the 20th century. There are obvious links with the style and form of chairs designed by Ole Wanscher, Hans Wegner and Børge Mogensen and others in the 1940s and 1950s but I did not appreciate the complicated history of this chair or understand its direct influence until I read the account set out by Gorm Harkær in his monograph on Kaare Klint that was published in 2010.

In 1919 Kaare Klint took over the teaching of technical drawing for cabinetmakers at the Technical Society's school. His approach to furniture design was clearly set out in his programme where he states that the school "will not try to teach you to perform so-called beautiful specious Drawings where the whole room is reflected in the Furniture Polish: we will try to teach you to draw accurate and realistic line drawings. We will not try to teach you to draw Artworks in different Styles, but try to show you the beauty that lies in the perfect simple Design and Usability."

 
RP00074A.jpg

In the collection of Designmuseum Danmark but not currently on display… copy of a Shaker rocking chair made in beech by Rud. Rasmussen in 1942. The catalogue entry RP00074 gives the designer as Kaare Klint. Note the elongated vase-shaped turning at the top of the front legs above the seat that copies the form of the chair owned by Einar Utzon-Frank and drawn by O Brøndum Christensen in 1927 rather than the pronounced taper or thinning down of the upper part of the front leg on the Shaker chair purchased by the museum in 1935

In 1924 Klint was appointed an assistant professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, in the newly-established Department of Furniture Design, where, again, he emphasised the importance of measuring and drawing good examples of historic furniture and that took up much of the first year of the course. In 1927 Klint described these drawings as "the beginning of an archive of furniture studies." *

The Department of Furniture Design was based in the Danish Museum of Art & Design - now Designmuseum Danmark - and students made carefully-measured drawings of a number of key pieces in the collection including a chair by the 18th-century English furniture maker Thomas Chippendale which then formed a starting point for the design of several modern chairs.

The Danish sculptor Einar Utzon-Frank, who also taught at the Royal Academy, owned a rocking chair that was described as "in the American Colonial style" and that chair was surveyed in 1927 by O Brøndum Christensen. A precisely-measured drawing of a Shaker chair at a scale of 1:5 and photographs taken of the chair in 1928 survive. **

Then, in 1935, in an auction, the museum bought this Shaker Rocking chair, very close to the form of the chair owned by Utzon-Frank and it was recorded in the acquisition index as A32/1935 where it is described as a shawl-back rocker with a cushion rail … that is the thin turned, slightly curved bar that runs across the back at the top of the back posts of the back rest of the chair.

In 1937 Edward and Faith Andrews published Shaker Furniture and, after a copy of that book was acquired by the museum library in 1941, it appears that Kaare Klint began a correspondence with American museums about Shaker furniture. ***

The following year, in 1942, Rud. Rasmussens Snedkerier - the cabinetmakers who worked closely with Kaare Klint and made much of the furniture that he designed - made a copy of the Utzon-Frank chair. They appear to have used the survey drawing by O Brøndum Christensen because the upper part of the front legs of the Rud. Rasmussen chair - with an elongated, turned, baluster shape above the seat rail - matches the Utzon-Frank chair rather than the chair owned by the museum that has long, elegant tapering or thinning down of the front leg between the seat rail and where it is housed into the underside of the arm rest.

Also in 1942, Kaare Klint produced designs for a number of chairs in a Shaker-style for FDB - the Danish Co-op - who had just set up a new office for furniture design. Two chairs, one with arms and one without, given the numbers J20 and J21, were made as prototypes by Fritz Hansen Eftf although in the end they were not put into production. ****

the chair designed for FDB - photographed in the exhibition on the work of Kaare Klint at Designmuseum Danmanrk

 

The original rocking chairs were made in workshops at one of the Shaker communities in America and, from their design, probably at Mount Lebanon where the settlement had been established in 1787 and continued right through until 1947. The religious movement of the Shakers had originated in England but many of the group emigrated to America from the north west - particularly from Lancashire - in search of a more tolerant place to practice their nonconformist beliefs. They took with them ideas and styles and local carpentry techniques which influenced the buildings they constructed and the furniture and panelling and fittings that they made in the settlements they established. Then, having built themselves farm houses, schools and chapels, and because the religious settlements were rural and generally self sufficient and relatively isolated - so by nature closed or inward looking - then these styles and designs became rather fixed. In fact, rocking chairs of this design appear in auction house sale catalogues where some are given a late date of manufacture - some examples dating from early in the 20th century.

So although Klint was not exactly admiring a contemporary chair nor was he inspired by a chair that was particularly old but nor, and perhaps more important, was it a Danish style or from a Danish tradition.

In England, architects and designers of the Arts and Crafts movement responded to what they saw as the poor quality of design of furniture and factory-made household goods as the industrial revolution in England evolved. They looked for inspiration to what they appreciated as a the better craftsmanship of traditional oak furniture of the 17th century and artisan furniture, such as Windsor chairs and cottage chairs, of the 18th century.

However, the important difference between England and Denmark by the 1920s was that, apart from expensive workshop furniture made for companies like Liberties or Heal's, most traditional cabinetmakers' had long disappeared but in Copenhagen the workshops and the skills of cabinetmakers had survived and, even if they felt threatened by factory production, were trying hard to adapt to a very different society and were trying to make furniture for a different customer.

So for Klint it was more about the survival of cabinetmakers' skills rather than revival and the Shaker chair was, for him, an example of a design that he considered to be so good that it would be difficult or impossible to improve. Wasn't that why the rocking chair was one of the few copies made by Rud. Rasmussen rather than a unique and specific design from Klint?

He must have admired the honesty and modesty of the Shaker chairs: they were straightforward and what decoration there was derived from the form and from the joinery and the techniques of the assembly … qualities that inspired the Church Chair by Klint from 1936, with the Shaker-style ladder back and thin turned stretchers and inspired the designs for FDB. Perhaps the only thing that is surprising is that the man who designed some of the most rational storage furniture from the period - with large pieces of furniture with cupboards and a series of drawers - was not, it would seem, inspired by the fitted cupboards and chests of drawers that are some of the best proportioned and most beautiful pieces that were produced by the Shakers.

 

 

notes:

 *  Gorm Harkær, Kaare Klint, in two volumes by Klintiana (2010) page 635

 ** drawing RR model no. 6356 reproduced by Gorm Harkær on page 637 and the photographs page 637

 *** page 367

**** Gorm Harkær reproduces the drawings and photographs of the two prototypes on pages 640 and 641

 

Architects and furniture designers of the Arts and Crafts movement in England reacted to what was seen by some as the poor quality of design that was on display in the Great Exhibition in London in 1851 and the poor design of manufactured goods in the second half of the 19th century. A leading proponent for a return to the quality of hand-made furniture and household goods and textiles was William Morris. The Art Workers' Guild was founded in 1884 and the architect and designer C R Ashbee founded the Guild and School of Handicraft in London in 1888 that moved to Chipping Camden in 1902.

There were comparable Arts and Crafts movements in the Netherlands and Germany and Austria but all, in reality, producing expensive furniture for a wealthy middle class … closer in character to the style of furniture in Denmark by Gottlieb Bindesbøll and his contemporaries rather than the work of Danish designers in the 20th century.

Webbing

the woven seat of the Shaker chair in the collection of Designmuseum Danmark

 

 

In 1942, when the cabinetmakers Rud. Rasmussem made a close copy of a Shaker rocking chair, the webbing for the seat, imitating the original, was woven by Lis Ahlmann but the chair did not go into production and, just two years later, when Hans Wegner designed a rather more free interpretation of the Shaker rocking chair to be made for FDB - the Danish Co-op - paper cord was used for the seat.

webbing on traditional upholstery - both chairs  in the collection of Designmuseum Danmark

Red Chair by Kaare Klint

Chair by Børge Mogensen

 

 

Webbing had been used as the support for traditional upholstery through the late 19th and early 20th century as the first layer that was stretched and fixed over the seat frame to support some form of padding that was then covered with fabric or leather.

Webbing was used on its own for the seats of some Danish chairs in the 1920s and 1930s - one good example being the chairs designed by Edvard Thomsen for the Søndermarken crematorium in 1927 - but as paper cord became popular in the 1940s, linen or canvas webbing became much less common.

Hans Wegner used webbing for the seat and back of the Pincer Chair from 1956 and the recliner JH613 (above) and the designer Finn Østergaard, who graduated from the Furniture Department of the School of Arts and Craft in 1975, produced a range of armchairs and high-backed chairs with woven webbing across the seat and back.

Generally, webbing works best with a square or a rectangular seat … it can be difficult to keep the tension even and webbing does stretch more than paper cord with use … and, certainly, webbing cannot be used with the complex joinery of many of the chairs designed by Hans Wegner whereas he could take cord across curved seat frames or around spindles or down through slots that were cut to take the cord around arm supports or the mortices and thin splats of chair backs.

Webbing was used more widely in other Scandinavian countries and by several prominent designers … so in Sweden, by Bruno Mathsson (below) and in Finland by Alvar Aalto.

detail of the webbing on a bentwood chair by Alvar Aalto

Chair 406

 

The traditional Shaker webbing - unbleached and a deep cream or buff colour - looks good with Danish oak so it is a pity that it has not been used more often as an alternative to cord for more straightforward dining chairs.

 

Shaker style webbing bought from America to recover a chair and photographed on the seat of a Wishbone Chair

 

J16 Gyngestol / Rocking Chair by Hans Wegner 1944

Hans Wegner designed a number of rocking chairs that were inspired by the 19th-century Shaker rocking chair in the collection at the design museum in Copenhagen. He copied the simple, straight, turned legs that are bird-mouthed over the shaped and distinctive rockers and he copied the vertical and distinctly upright and high back posts of the chair.

However, in this version, he combined those distinct elements with the vertical rails of the back and a deeper head rest that were inspired by traditional Windsor chairs from England.

With Børge Mogensen - who he knew from the School of Arts and Crafts - Wegner was commissioned by Frederik Nielsen of the Danish Cooperative Union (FDB) to design a range of good, well-made furniture to be sold at a reasonable price that could be afforded by couples and young families living in smaller houses or two and three-room apartments. 

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chairs and pews for Søndermarkens Krematorium by Edvard Thomsen circa 1927

 

 

Edvard Thomsen (1884-1980) was an important figure through the 1920s and 1930s in that period when what we would now recognise as modern architecture emerged.

His work as an architect is generally classified, in terms of style, as New Classicism.

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Chair J2991 by Ole Wanscher 1960

chair in the collection of Designmuseum Danmark

 

From the late 1930s and all the way through to the last Cabinetmakers' Exhibition in 1966, A J Iversen showed furniture designed by Ole Wanscher.

A number of variations were produced of chairs in this style, one with a deeper back rest and another with a bowed front to the seat. This form of chair remained popular through the 50s and 60s - with the back rest running round into the arm rests and the curve supported at the front by the front legs taken up as posts. This gives the frame of the chair structural integrity so, although the legs are relatively thin and certainly elegant, the construction is so precise that stretchers can be omitted.

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cantilevered chair by Mogens Lassen 1933

Mogens Lassen was just a year older than his brother Fleming and both were at school with Arne Jacobsen. All three became architects and designers and Fleming Lassen worked in partnership with Jacobsen on several major projects in the late 1920s and through the 1930s including working together on the House of the Future … an exhibition entry from 1929 … and the Library at Nyborg and the town hall at Søllerød. 

Both Mogens and Fleming Lassen travelled widely but it was the buildings by Mogens, particularly the villas he designed, and his furniture that were closer to is generally recognised as the International style of the 1930s. Mogens Lassen studied in France and was offered but turned down a post in the studio of Le Corbusier and returned to Denmark where he established his own design studio in 1935.

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woven rattan or cane on modern chairs

Thonet Chair 209 1859 in the collection of Designmuseum Danmark

the chair weaver by Paul Sandby 1759

 

Cane or woven rattan was used for furniture through in 17th and in the 18th century but for the first use of cane for modern or early modern furniture probably best-known are the bentwood chairs from Michael Thonet in Austria from the second half of the 19th century and then the use of woven cane for the seats and backs of chairs by designers from the Bauhaus in Germany in the 1920s - particularly the cantilevered chairs with woven cane seats and back by Marcel Breuer but also the MR10 arm chair with a cantilevered frame in chrome tube with woven basketwork seat designed by Mies van der Rohe in1927.

Perhaps the most famous Danish design with woven cane is the Faaborg Chair designed by Kaare Klint. This has cane work across the back rest and for the seat with the cane hand woven, taken through holes in the frame and held in place with pegs or splints of cane.

The traditional pattern has lengths of cane taken across the seat front to back - spaced a few millimetres apart, and then canes taken across the seat, interwoven, under and over alternate canes, and then canes are interwoven across diagonally, again in both directions, to create a crisscross with a distinct pattern of octagons. On most chairs the edge is finished with a single cane running around over the holes and held in place by a loop of cane so that the effect looks rather like stitching. Glue can be used on the underside of the seat to hold cut ends in place.

In a cheaper version, cane is woven to the same pattern but as a sheet that is then stretched over the frame of the seat or back rest with the outer edge and loose ends driven down into a narrow channel or groove and held in place with glue and by a spline of cane driven in on the top.

Chairs can also be covered with woven canes that form a tight basket-like surface often with a pattern formed by weaving canes in pairs and the edge is usually finished with a braided pattern in cane run around the seat.

 

Faaborg Chair by Kaare Klint 1914 - the chair was designed to be as light as possible - a good reason for the use of cane - and one consideration was to be able to see the complex pattern of the floor of the museum through the cane work - weaving the cane must have been difficult particularly around a block of wood that strengthens the leg but also the cane is taken down at an angle to a channel cut around the inner face of the curved pieces that form the frame of the seat

Chair designed by Kaare Klint for the Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen - the chair was designed to be used with a leather-covered cushion - the batten fixed to the inner side of the seat rail makes the weaving of the cane more rational and easier

Chair B64 by Marcel Breuer 1928

 

Detail of chair 6107  made by Fritz Hansen about 1934 and in the style of the chair by Marcel Breuer - note how cut ends of canes are tucked up into a channel cut along the underside of the frame

 

The Round Chair designed by Hans Wegner in 1949 -

note how the canes are crossed over at the edge to form a pattern for a border but actually the technique is the way of taking the canework around the leg and rather than going completely over the frame of the seat, the cane is taken back through a long slot

unlike seats in paper cord, the cane is just taken across the top of the frame rather returning on the underside to form a double layer

 

detail of chair CH27 designed by Hans Wegner in 1951 - a complex arrangement of slots and loops to take the cane around the main structural parts of the chair - the basket weave pattern has paired canes running front to back with spaces and paired canes but without gaps running across the seat

Bull Chair JH518 by Hans Wegner 1961 - here the pattern of the weave has to accommodate the deep bow to the front of the chair so the basket pattern proper only starts with the first cane running across immediately beyond the front legs

 

The Folding Chair JH512 by Hans Wegner from 1949 - here the space where the cane work is interrupted by the handle becomes a feature of the pattern with a rib or border at the front and a wide space or band across the seat and here the canes running from front back are crossed over in pairs 

 

detail of cantilevered chair designed by Mogens Lassen in 1936 - an amazing basket woven around a frame of tubular steel - tightly binding cane around sections of the frame is also found on chairs in wood at this time - the cane here is where the hands rest when you are sitting in the chair and are the parts of the chair you might hold and press down on as you stand up - the pattern of the basketwork gives a rounded rather than a sharp front edge against the back of the legs of the person sitting in the chair

 

cane seat on the Colonial Chair by Ole Wanscher

 

 

The Colonial Chair was designed by Ole Wanscher in 1949 and was made by the cabinetmaker P Jeppesen. The chair has leather cushions that are supported across the back by very thin slats that were inspired by Shaker chairs made in the United States from the middle of the 19th century. However, the seat is cane woven over a simple frame that drops down onto battens on the inner bottom edge of the seat rails.

There is a relatively-simple grid or open basket weave pattern, rather than the traditional honeycomb formed by canes taken across the seat diagonally as the cane work is simply support for the cushion.

The chair is amazingly light with the frame reduced to the thinnest dimensions possible.

 

For a longer post on the Colonial Chair

PK24 / ECK24 by Poul Kjærholm 1965

photographed at Designmuseum Danmark in 2015 in their exhibition 'Reclining'

 

This has to be one of the most elegant recliners and one of the most stripped down and spare. It is simply a frame in sprung steel covered with a taut skin of woven cane and supported on the thinnest possible steel frame. 

There is a separate frame of steel that folds under the centre section of the seat - running parallel to the cane work but separated from it by spacers. This forms what looks like a sledge or from the side runners that rest on a simple frame … a third rectangle in flat steel strip but with the ends bent upwards but at an angle to form a cradle.

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Deck Chair JH524 / pp524 by Hans Wegner 1958

 

Hans Wegner designed this elegant and simple recliner or deck chair in wood in 1958. 

There are two main sections … a long frame for the seat is gently curved in a convex arc that rests on the ground at the back but is raised off the ground by short tapered legs towards the front. 

Inset from the back is a frame for the back rest that is fixed to the seat frame with metal pivots on each side and held in one of four possible angles by a bar of metal hinged to the back rest and held at the bottom on sprogs on the seat frame … a mechanism similar to that on the Tub Chair also by Wegner and designed in 1954.

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chairs with seats in paper cord

The Shaker-style chair CH36 (top) by Hans Wegner from 1962 with the dining chair CH23 designed by Wegner in 1950 shown from the side and a detail of the seat of chair PP112 from 1978 

 

Twisted paper cord woven across an open wood frame has been used to form the seats of Danish chairs since the 1940s but through the 1950s and 1960s paper cord became perhaps the most distinctive and, for some people, the type of seat most closely associated with chairs from the Danish Modern period … Hans Wegner used paper cord for many of his most important chairs including the Windsor-style Rocking Chair and the Chinese Chair - both designed in 1944 - the Peacock Chair from 1947; the Wishbone Chair that was produced by Carl Hansen & Son from 1950 and then for a series of remarkable chairs including the CH44 from 1965, with its thin seat and four thin slats across the back, in a style reminiscent of Shaker chairs, and the PP201 from 1969 that could hardly be more refined and elegant.

The idea of weaving a chair seat across the open frame of a chair was not new: antique Danish chairs with seats in twisted straw survive from the 18th century and from even earlier there are chairs with rudimentary seats in rope and then, from the 19th century, split cane or rattan was used to form the seats and backs of chairs. *

Woven cane and even basket-like seats were used for several early, modern chairs and interlaced woven canvas webbing and even interlaced strips of leather were used for seats and backs in several chairs designed in the 1930s but as war engulfed Europe and, in this context, more important as war overtook the Far East it became more difficult and then impossible to source rattan or cane and merchant shipping was first disrupted and then soon became impossible for transporting anything but essential goods - not just in the Baltic and North Sea but around Africa and across the Indian Ocean.

Several articles suggest that initially paper cord was developed in the war as an alternative to string for wrapping parcels … but, so far, I have found no references to indicate which Danish paper mills first produced paper cord or when production started and no reference to indicate who,- which designer or which furniture maker - first used paper cord on a chair as an alternative to cane.

Paper cord used by Danish companies is twisted with three strands that form a cord 3.5 to 3.6mm thick … although this is usually expressed as 7 strands to an inch. It is generally unbleached - so a natural colour - although a number of chairs are produced with an option to have black cord or even white bleached paper cord. However, it is the natural light brown or dark cream colour that seems to work particularly well with oak but can also look striking when there is slightly more contrast with a darker wood for the chair frame such as walnut. Natural cord works well with wood that has been stained black but I'm not easily convinced that it works as well with white or with pale wood like ash or the colour of beech that tends to darken over time to a yellow.

There are videos on the internet that take you through the process of weaving a seat for anyone wanting to restore a chair. Perhaps the most difficult part is to keep the tension right across the whole seat and to keep the lines of cord regular and straight, particularly the diagonal line running in to the centre when it is that pattern of weaving, and difficult to do it properly so the pattern remains even as the weaving settles into place. Generally, the cords running front to back seem tighter than the cords running in from each side.

Apparently, most paper cord is lightly waxed so, to some extent, resists dirt and the web site for Carl Hansen has useful suggestions for how to clean and maintain paper cord. With care a good seat is said to last up to 60 years before it needs to be rewoven.

 

note:

 *Early examples are illustrated in Danske Bondemøbler by Axel Steenberg and the distinct arrangement of the seat rails found on many of the modern chairs with paper cord - with the side rails set higher than the front rail forming the hollow shape of the seat - can be seen on several of these earlier chairs.

 

The use of paper cord developed with two basic patterns and, in terms of the form of the frame of the seat, these types were not interchangeable … generally a chair has to have an arrangement of the frame or the rails of the seat that is appropriate for the specific type of woven seat.

basket weave in paper cord

The woven or basket form of seat is close to the techniques that had been developed for rattan or cane seats. Generally they have a single woven layer of cords across the top of the seat with cords running straight back from the front rail and then cords running across the seat going over and under and usually over pairs of cords rather than over and under every other cord. Spaces between paired cords are created by winding the cord several times around the seat frame before returning across the seat with the next line of weaving.

As paper cord is softer, so not as fine or as tough as cane, the traditional cane pattern - with a grid and then with diagonal canes woven in and out across the seat to form an octagonal pattern - is not possible. Any pattern, above and beyond the basket weave, is restricted to leaving bands or gaps often with crossing over cords to form a pattern, with a series of X crosses, and generally that is kept to the edge of the seat.

Paper cord is not appropriate for weaving through holes in the frame - a technique used with cane - in part because it is too thick and in part because turned at a sharp angle and then under stress with the weight of someone sitting down, the cord would sheer on the edge of the hole. Nor can cord be used successfully with a round seat … split cane has a flat back so tends to keep in position where it crosses over and round the seat rails but the round paper cord seems to slide or move slightly so many chairs have a rounding off or recess in the areas where the cord will pass around the rail that helps keep it in place and running back straight. The only way to keep the cord in position would be to use metal staples or bent over nails and with most cord seats these are kept to a minimum … on most chairs used just at te start to hold the end of the cord in place or where an awkward angle, for instance around a leg, would mean that cords could drop down or cut the angle of the corner if not held in place.

The basket pattern seat is normally woven over quite deep front and back rails that on many chairs are curved down to create a more appropriate cushion shape … one chair in particular  - the CH23 by Hans Wegner from 1951 - imitates closely the profile of the Red Chair with its deep front rail to the seat.

In the most straightforward form of chair, the seat rails are simply spindles, rather like the stretchers, or are slightly wider than they are high but even then little thicker than the stretchers. On the Wishbone Chair the seat is just 30mm thick including the seat frame and the cord passing across the top and back under. This is important because earlier rush seats or seats in twisted straw tended to be quite bulky and uneven so looked crude or rustic (fine in an old home in a country farmhouse or village cottage but not so appropriate in a Copenhagen apartment) but actually the paper cord seat - as developed by Wegner for a chair like the CH44 from 1965 - with its thin seat and four thin slats across the back in a style reminiscent of Shaker chairs or the PP201 from 1969 - could hardly be more refined and elegant.

As paper cord was used on more and more sophisticated chairs there are more and more intriguing designs developed to take the paper down in front of or around rails or around back splats. This often meant taking the cord through slots in the frame rather than across and over the full section of a side rail.

 

Dining-room chair CH23 designed by Wegner in 1950

 

PP63

by Hans Wegner from 1975 - pairs of cords running front to back are spaced out with the cord taken seven times around the rail before the pair is taken back across the seat to create a much more open weave pattern

 

the Wishbone Chair type of seat woven with paper cord

Chair for FDB by Jørgen Bækmark

 

The second form of woven seat is the type where the cord is taken completely over the seat rail and returned across the underside so in appearance looks almost like a cord seat pad with little or none of the frame left exposed.

The Peacock Chair has a robust frame but with the rails of the seat that are much wider than they are high so they are strong but still not bulky. In this chair the front, side and back rails of the seat are all at the same level with the turned legs driven through a hole towards each corner and held in place by splitting vertically down into the top of the leg with a wedge driven in from above. This is made into an attractive feature of the construction by being made with care and being left exposed so the cords of the seat are set in from the corners of the seat but the X-shaped pattern of the cords is the same as that on the Wishbone and later chairs.

Seat rails are, at the very least, rounded on the inner edge to reduce wear but on several chairs the inner upper corner of the rail is taken down to form a chamfer or perhaps more accurately a slope that sets a hollow shape for the seat and, again, reduces the stress on the cord where a sharp angle might cause it to wear or break.

Photographs of the paper cord seat of a Wishbone Chair are shown in a separate post.

 

Påfuglestolen or Peacock Chair JH550 designed by Hans Wegner in 1947

the paper cord seat of a Wishbone chair

 

The Y-stolen or Wishbone Chair was designed by Hans Wegner and has been produced by the Danish company Carl Hansen & Son since 1950.

The distinctive features of the design include the curved back rest then sweeps round into arm rests as a development of an earlier chair - the Chinese Chair - designed by Wegner and this is supported at the back by a thin Y-shaped splat that gives the chair its English name.

The seat is woven paper cord or Danish Paper Cord ... a material linked particularly with designs by Wegner but used by many designers in the classic period of modern Danish furniture through the 1950s and 1960s.

 

As on many chairs, the back of the seat is narrower than the front of the seat - which means that the sides rails are not parallel - then weaving the seat starts with extra turns of cord around the front rail. On the Wishbone Chair, the front seat rail is 41cm wide, between the front legs, while the distance between the back posts of the chair is just 34cm so there are ten initial turns around the front rail of the seat on each side with the eleventh taken straight back to the back rail hard into the angle against the back leg post to start the weave proper.

When the seat is completed this form of weaving creates the distinct open wedge shape at the outer ends of the front of the seat.

Taking the cord across and back, the weave forms the characteristic X on the top and on the underside that is rather like the X like you see on the back of many paper envelopes.

But the pattern of weaving on Wishbone Chairs is actually not as straightforward as it appears - a simple cord taken straight across and over and then returning on the underside - but forms three layers with the cords of the middle layer running at right angles to the direction of the cords on the top and the underside.

Wire staples are used at some points to keep tension tight at crucial stages of the work .

The weaver works from the outer rail inwards and joins in the cord are tied off with knots on the underside.

 
  1. the seat cords from above showing the intermediate layer of cords running across
  2. extra cords wound around the front seat rail to bring the first cord to run back square to the inner corner of the narrower back rail
  3. the extra turns of the first cord and the position of the side rail of the seat - set higher than the front rail - forms this distinctive triangular gap
  4. the cord around the front leg from below ... note the small metal staple holding the first cords in place
  5. in front of the splat of the back, there is a slot cut down through the back frame of the seat and the cords are taken across the seat, down the slot and then return back under the seat
  6. joins in separate lengths of cord are tied off with the knots on the underside
 

There is an earlier post about the Wishbone Chair with a more detailed description.

 

CH22 by Hans Wegner 1950

This low chair or easy chair from Carl Hansen - identified in their catalogues as CH22 - was one of the first chairs that Hans Wegner designed for the company. It went into production in 1950 and marked the start of a significant commercial partnership that continued through the rest of Wegner's long career.

This is not one of the best-known or most famous chairs designed by Wegner but it is important and significant for several reasons:

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