Halyard

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PK25 by Poul Kjærholm 1951

detail of Flag Halyrad Chair by Hans Wegner 1950

 

Halyard or rope was used in a number of chairs in the 1950s and 1960s, and not just for garden or terrace furniture.

It was most-often used in its natural colour so a grey/brown or buff of the jute used to make the rope although some designs were and are offered with the rope dyed black.

Modern versions of these chairs use halyard with the jute wrapped around a nylon core for a stronger rope and to minimise stretching.

The way the rope is strung across a seat or seat and back varies so either threaded through holes - as on the Deck Chair or recliner by Hans Wegner from 1958 - or, more often, tightly spaced and wrapped over the frame - as with paper cord - or the rope can be knotted at intervals along the frame and formed into a net rather like a hammock with the ropes interwoven in a diamond pattern and possibly with cleats or metal loops that act as spacers.

Through his career Hans Wegner used rope or halyard on some of his largest and most dramatic chairs including the Flag Halyard Chair in 1950, the Hammock Chair pp135 from 1967, Rocking Chair pp124 from 1984 and Circle Chair from 1986.

Poul Kjærholm used halyard for the seat and back of Chair PK25 designed in 1951; for the wooden chair made by Thorvald Madsens Snedkerier that was designed in 1952 and for the small and light dining chair PK3 that Kjærholm designed in 1956.

 

Danish chairs of the 20th century

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Over the Autumn of 2017, just over 60 separate posts were added to the site to look at Danish chairs from the last century with a brief assessment of each that focused on details about the form and the construction and, where possible, put the design of each into a wider context.

A third of these chairs were designed by Hans Wegner and that reflects the number of chairs he designed through a long career but also, of course, his importance as a master of innovation who, as a designer, continually pushed the boundaries for what could be done and how and why.

The series was inspired by the chairs in the permanent collection of Designmuseum Danmark in Copenhagen where a new display was opened just over a year ago.

With a selection of chairs from the permanent collection of the museum now shown in a well-lit arrangement in a dedicated gallery where the chairs are set, each in its own display case, it is possible to look at each design without distraction and, with the chairs raised up off the floor, it is possible to look closely at how the chairs are constructed and to appreciate the techniques of the carpentry - the way that the separate parts are cut, shaped and fitted together - the finish of the wood, the use of metal for parts of the chair or, with some chairs, the whole frame, the development of new materials such as plywood or plastic and, with many of the chairs, the superb quality of the workmanship. 

In the museum, the chairs are grouped by type to introduce visitors to the idea of different forms of construction … and because it suggests trends and technical developments, that is more important than more vague classifications by style or period and certainly more important than a simple sequence by date.

This new gallery presents to the visitor a key body of research material on open access with extensive labels and information panels but in addition the museum catalogue is available on line so it is possible there to look up furniture in the collection by date, period, maker, materials and type and the index also means that it is possible to search for cross references to more information or images of other furniture by the same designer or the same maker that is not currently on display but is in the reserve collection.

It was also crucial for these recent posts here, on this web site, that last year saw the republication of the four volumes on the cabinetmakers' annual exhibitions - Dansk Mobelkunst Gennem 40 År - published by Lindhardt og Ringhof.

Edited by the designer Grete Jalk, these were published first in 1987 and record exhibitions that were held in Copenhagen each year, from 1927 through to 1966, to show the public the latest and the very best of Danish furniture.

For the first decade, the exhibitions were held at different venues in Copenhagen but, from 1937 through to the last exhibition in 1966, all but one year when the exhibition was at Charlottenborg and one year at the Forum - a total of 28 exhibitions were held at the design museum. This was remarkable and emphasises the important role that the museum had and the museum still has in showing current design - not simply to curate the design of the past - and one reason why the present exhibition Dansk Design Nu - looking at Danish design this century - is so important.

With posts here on 60 chairs, and the intention to add more, then some sort of index was necessary and arranging that by date also works as a simple time line for chairs from the 20th century. Using the search feature of the site or the categories and tags it is possible to search by designer or cabinet maker. At the very least, this proves that there was not a clear or straightforward linear progress through those decades and it suggests interesting questions about the age of designers or at which point in their career they produced a specific chair and whether, whatever their age, they were pushing boundaries or exploring for themselves a new trend or a new material.

 

The display of chairs in Designmuseum Danmark provides an amazing opportunity to not only look at the chairs up close but the lighting also meant, for me, that it is possible to look at the details - to look at how the chairs are constructed - and take photographs. Recording details of the joinery and the materials is important as fewer and fewer people learn about timber or work with wood when they are at school and it is not an aspect of design covered in many blogs but understanding how a chair is constructed reveals much about how or why a chair has a certain or a distinct look and how that relates to other chairs of the same form. 

For obvious reasons the measurements of the chairs have been given where possible because it is important to have some way of judging the scale of a design and that is rarely obvious from a photograph and particularly difficult if the photograph shows the chair without the context of a room.

But also, as I looked at more and more of the chairs and looked at the photographs from the cabinetmakers' annual exhibitions, it was clear that it is now difficult to understand these pieces of furniture in anything like an original setting and that becomes more difficult with time as many of these pieces of furniture move from being everyday objects that people have in their homes and sit on to be what are now valuable collector or museum pieces.

Some of the designers and architects themselves were clearly concerned about the setting of their furniture. From the first exhibitions in the late 1920s the cabinetmakers used room settings and much of the furniture was also aimed at a specific customer and therefore, to some extent, a known type of room … from a young couple moving into a small, new, two-room apartment through to a wealthy middle-class family buying bookshelves and a desk by Klint or chairs for a large terrace or garden … so all the chairs were designed with at least some idea of the space or the setting where the furniture would be used. 

Some designers went further. Poul Kjærholm designed with meticulous care the settings of his furniture in exhibitions and shop displays and Finn Juhl chose the colours against which his furniture was shown by producing drawings with colour wash of the room settings for the Cabinetmakers' Exhibition.

This first selection has focused on key chairs of the classic period of modern Danish furniture, so with just 60 that is not, at this point, even all the most famous chairs but at least a reasonable selection of different types of chair and different materials and a range of designers. 

One obvious problem is that this panders to the idea that Danish designers focus on chairs and it reinforces a general misconception that somehow the only period of great design in Denmark was that so-called Classic period of the 1950s and 1960s.

Therefore, the next stage for this web site will be to look at recent chairs, since the turn of the century, and present them in a similar way … looking at form and construction and context … and possibly then to look at other types of Danish furniture in the same way … so sofas and tables might be next.

This should form a growing body of material with a chance to experiment with indexing and cross referencing and posts will be updated to add to entries if more information or better photographs become available or to add more links to archive drawings and historic images.

 
First posted on 31st December 2017
INDEX to the posts on chairs from the 20th century

Chairs at Designmuseum Danmark

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looking at chairs to left or right or above or below you can see how a shape or type of chair evolved or how a form can be re-interpreted in a different material

At Designmuseum Danmark there is a relatively new display for their collection of modern chairs where the chairs are arranged by type rather than by designer or by displaying the chairs in chronological order. 

This typography puts the chairs into relatively distinct and easily identified groups where each group is defined by a form or shape and by the style of a chair … the form of the chair, techniques of working with a material and details of construction and style, all being closely interrelated.

Most of the chairs shown date from the 20th century and were made by Danish cabinetmakers or Danish manufacturers although several older chairs, several more recent Danish chairs and some chairs from outside Denmark have been included where they provide evidence for how or why or when a specific Danish design evolved or if they are relevant evidence from a specific or wider social or historic context.

Most of the chairs are made in wood but there are chairs with frames in metal tube and there are metal wire and even plastic chairs so there are interesting examples where closely-related designs - in terms of style and shape - can be seen in tube-metal alongside a version in bent-wood although obviously the techniques and the details of construction are very different.

The main groups, defined by the museum, are Folding chairs and stools; Easy chairs - so generally lower and wider chairs - and Windsor chairs - with vertical spindles across the back to support the top rail or - in taller chairs - a head rest. Chippendale chairs have a sturdy frame of square-set legs - usually with stretchers between the legs and a relatively low back and when they have arms these are housed into the uprights of the back. There is a group derived from Shaker chairs, from America - often with horizontal slats across the back rest. Chinese chairs and steam-bent chairs, are similar to the Chippendale Chairs but are distinct in terms of the sitting position which is more upright and more formal and generally the top of the back rail sweeps round into arm rests as a single curve rather than in separate pieces. Round arm chairs and Klismos chairs also have curved and relatively low back rests that continue round into arm rests - with  The Chair by Hans Wegner perhaps the most famous Danish example. A Klismos or Klismos Chair is a distinct classical or Greek type with a short but sharply-curved back rest across the top of the back uprights with legs that are usually tapered and splay out down to the floor in a curve. Shell chairs include chairs in moulded or shaped plywood, moulded plastic or metal with shapes that provide - usually in one piece - the support for the seat and back without a framework, and are usually on a separate frame of legs or on a pedestal, that itself can be made from a different material to the shell, although there are shell chairs where seat, back and support are all moulded. Moulded chairs with a shell in foam or plastic first appeared commercially in the 1950s and moulded plastic chairs have by this century become almost ubiquitous in the collections of most Danish manufacturers. The final group identified by the museum are Cantilever chairs where normally there is a strong base on the floor and some form of support for the front of the seat but no legs or support under the back of the seat - an interesting but not a common type in Denmark. 

chair by PV Jensen Klint circa 1910

armchair by Kaare Klint 1922

JH505 the Cow Horn Chair by Hans Wegner 1952

Ant shell chair by Arne Jacobsen 1951

EKC12 in tubular steel by Poul Kjærholm 1962

PK15 by Poul Kjærholm 1978

all in the collection of Designmuseum Danmark in Copenhagen

 

The study and analysis of chair designs from different periods has been an important part of the training for designers in Danish schools of architecture and schools of design for a century.  

In the 1920s, the architect Kaare Klint was responsible for the conversion and the fittings of the buildings of an 18th-century hospital to form an appropriate exhibition space for the museum of Danish design - then called the Kunstindustrimuseet Danmark. Klint taught design in the museum where he encouraged architects and furniture designers to study and draw historic pieces and to study and appreciate cabinet making techniques even if they were not craftsmen themselves and he emphasised the close relationship between design and the techniques of construction.

This division of chair types in the design museum is different from the groups set out by Nicolai de Gier and Stine Liv Buur in their important book Chairs' Tectonics where their primary divisions are by material and then by the form and structure … so they look specifically at how the seat, back rest and support or legs are joined or fixed together and take that as the starting point for their classification of chair types.

Designerof the new display: Boris Berlin of ISKOS-BERLIN Copenhagen

Curator of the collection: Christian Holmsted Olesen.
Graphic design: Rasmus Koch Studio.
Light design: Jørgen Kjær/Cowi Light Design and Adalsteinn Stefansson.
Graphic design: Rasmus Koch Studio.

 

note:

this was initially posted on the 2 October but has been moved up to make a more-sensible introduction to the series of posts about chairs posted through October 2017. The chairs were selected because they are important examples from major Danish designers but they also cover all the types of chair in the design museum typology.

These posts on chairs are also an experiment for this site in trying to present more photographs and slightly more information than is normal in a blog to highlight and analyse key features of each design. 

Selecting the category a Danish chair will take you to all the posts in the sequence in which they were posted and there is also a new time line to form an index to these posts:

 

why does Denmark produce so many 'good' chairs?

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the display of the collection of chairs at Designmuseum Danmark in Copenhagen

 

Chairs are a common pieces of furniture in most modern homes around the world but the chair has a special - almost an iconic place - in the history of modern design in Denmark.

At the design museum in Copenhagen, in a relatively new gallery, chairs from their collection are each given their own space; each elevated and each given spotlights that are set to come on as you approach.

Don't get me wrong … this is not a criticism … actually far far from a criticism because by lifting the chairs up from their normal place - on the floor with and amongst other furniture - you can appreciate the different designs; you can look at the details and see how the chairs are put together; and with the chairs arranged in groups you begin to see how they fit into a context or a sequence of similar or of very different chairs and, above all, you can see how well made most of them are … so they certainly deserve our attention.

But then take a step back … so why so many different beautiful chairs and from a relatively short period of time? - most in the gallery date from the period from 1930 to the last decade of the last century - and why so many chairs from a relatively small country?

They receive well-deserved acclaim and not just in Denmark but internationally - so much so that these chairs are widely imitated and, in some cases, they are copied so carefully that some are passed off as originals. Some chairs from the 1950s and 1960s, by certain designers, now achieve almost eye-watering amounts of money in auctions. And yet they were all made simply so that we can sit down.

read more

 

the Shaker rocking chair in the collection at Designmuseum Danmark

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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 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 teaching 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 a 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 his course. In 1927 Klint described these drawings as "the beginning of an archive of furniture studies." *

The Department of Furniture Design was then in the Danish Museum of Art & Design - now Designmuseum Danmark - and not in the main academy building in the palace of Charlottenborg. Students made carefully-measured drawings of a number of key pieces in the museum collection including a chair by the 18th-century English furniture maker Thomas Chippendale and these study drawings could then be used as a starting point for the design of a modern chair. 

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 arms and 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 - the Utzon-Frank chair and the museum rocking chair - 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 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 part this should be seen as a a reaction to the poor quality of some industrial products of the period … a parallel reaction to what happened in England where architects and designers of the Arts and Crafts movement responded to what they saw as the poor design of furniture and factory-made household goods as industrial or factory production in England took over from craft and guild workshop production. In England 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, there were some significant differences between England and Denmark by the 1920s. Apart from expensive workshop furniture, made for companies like Liberties or Heal's, most traditional cabinetmakers' had long gone in England but in Copenhagen the workshops and the skills of cabinetmakers had survived - even if they felt threatened by factory production - and they were trying hard to adapt to a very different society and trying to make furniture for a different customer.

So for Kaare Klint it was more about the survival of cabinetmakers' skills rather than the revival of skills. The Shaker chair was, for him, one example of a design that he considered to be so good that it would be difficult or impossible to improve … the rocking chair was one of the few copies made by Rud. Rasmussen rather than a unique and specific design from Klint.

Klint seems to have admired the honesty and modesty of the Shaker chairs: they were straightforward … what decoration there was derived from the form and from the joinery and the techniques of the assembly … and those were the qualities that inspired the Church Chair by Klint from 1936, with Shaker-style ladder back and thin turned stretchers and the Shaker Chair also inspired designs for FDB. 

Perhaps the only thing that is surprising is that although Klint designed some of the most rational storage furniture from this period - with large pieces of furniture with cupboards and a series of drawers - he 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 English Arts and Crafts Movement 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, generally, the poor design of factory-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 that started in London in 1888 but moved to Chipping Camden in 1902.

There were comparable Arts and Crafts movements in the Netherlands and Germany and Austria but all, inevitably, produced 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.

 

the everyday chair

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

They are not precisely what would have been found in a kitchen in Vesterbro or at a table in an apartment in Islands Brygge - they had to be more robust so were more expensive that chairs for the home - 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 they have 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. Note, the setting had a P.H. lamp over the table.

 

 
 

Through the late Autumn of 2017, posts here 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 distinctly old-fashioned chairs and much of the best modern furniture was produced in small quantities or even, in some cases, made only when commissioned. Many of the designs would have been considered expensive, even at the time, and well beyond the budget of an ordinary working family.

Of course, for offices and schools and for factories and work places - let alone for ordinary families in ordinary homes in new apartments in the city in the 1920s and 1930s and 1940s - Danish manufacturers 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 reasonably priced but 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 table 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 there were designs for a study for a student by Børge Mogensen and Aage Windeleff. In the exhibition in 1962 there was even a large kitchen designed by Henning Jensen and Hanne and Torben Valeur that was made by the cabinetmakers Christensen & Larsen although it was clear that this would have been an exceptional and expensive project … so hardly a flat-pack job.

Around 1930, Magnus L Stephensen was asked to furnish two test apartments for a public housing scheme at Ryparken - apartment buildings 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 from 1930 designed 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.

The Café Chair in bent wood from the Viennese manufacturer Thonet - designed in the middle of the 19th century - is acknowledged by many historians to be the first factory-made chair and it was certainly a very popular everyday chair that was exported widely and in large numbers … my grandparents in England bought a Thonet chair, the version with arms, in the 1930s.

Steam bending wood and the use of plywood, was not common in Denmark until the 1920s when the manufacturer Fritz Hansen realised the potential of both and Søren Hansen, grandson of the founder of the company, designed what was called a Dan-stole for the company in 1930 - a rationalisation and simplification of the Thonet Café Chair - and Magnus Stephensen designed 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 design 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 a 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 there 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 the designs were shown to the public when he furnished a test apartment in the Coop 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-hung unit with a front flap that dropped down as a surface for writing at and on the floor the room had simple rush matting. 

Rasmussen published an article in the magazine Andelsbladet to set out the work of his better furniture campaign and he explained that 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 went on to describe it 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 and 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 and Børge Mogensen all designed chairs for FDB Møbler. 

 

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

 

Now all major design and furniture companies have a range of basic or straightforward and well-made chairs but the launch of a new chair can still be a major event.

Some companies produce classics designed in the 1950s and 1960s where the price can be kept as low as possible by the rationalisation of manufacturing methods or simply by the scale of production and make it possible now 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 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

 

the Red Chair type

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Chippendale stole / Chippendale chairs

L1170870.jpg

If asked to name an important early modern Danish chair, many people would probably suggest Chair 7 by Arne Jacobsen or possibly a chair by Poul Kjærholm. My guess would be that very few people would suggest the Red Chair designed by Kaare Klint in the 1920s as the first truly modern Danish chair but surely that could be a valid claim? 

Now, fast approaching the 2020s, the Red Chair from the 1920s seems old-fashioned and possibly slightly boring or staid for current taste but through the 1930s and 1940s it was a common and popular type of chair.

It was the first chair where we can see that 'modern' ideas of simplicity and structural clarity were essential to the design … Kaare Klint analysed what he considered to be the core requirements for a chair - worked out how that chair could be made and tried to express that rational approach in how the chair looked and, in that process, he stripped away any unnecessary decoration. Essentially here is the idea of form following function and material.

Part of the problem for us now is that then he took an 18th-century English design as his starting point and in part it is difficult to appreciate chairs of this type because, for modern tastes, they appear to be worthy but rather boring … possibly more suited now and possibly even then to an office or institution than to a home.

In fact the chair was designed for the design museum in 1927 and then in 1930 Klint produced a version of the chair with upholstered arms for the office of the Prime Minister Thorvald Stauning with a set of four smaller chairs for the staff of the Prime Minister and a set of 12 chairs for his conference room.

The same cabinet maker who made the chairs for the Prime Minister - Rud. Rasmussen - made a version of the Red Chair for the Thorvaldsen Museum that was lighter, with cane seat and back, and for an office on Nørre Voldgade, designed by Povl Baumann, Kaare Klint designed a chair that was a variation on the Red Chair with a front to the seat that is bowed out rather than straight when seen from above … a style of chair that went with the slightly severe classic revival taste of some architecture of the period.

So the Red Chair type was well designed, well made and sensible and strong - essentially, a serious chair. Solicitors and bank managers in England in the 1950s and 1960s sat on chairs like this. After graduating - working first for the University of London and then for the Civil Service - I sat at a desk on chairs that were a variation of this … chairs with straight wood legs, side and cross stretchers, upholstered leather seat, wooden arms, one with a padded leather back rest and the other with a series of thin wood slats across the back. So it was a good chair for offices and public buildings.

the chair designed by Klint for the office of Prime Minister Thorvald Stauning

 

But it was also obvious that this style of chair, even if it was a little formal, had a place in a home.

In the first exhibition of the Cabinetmakers in 1927 there was a room setting with furniture by the cabinetmaker Anny Berntsen & Co. The dining chairs were relatively simple but well-proportioned and well-made in oak with upholstered square seats that tapered towards a narrower back and the back legs were curved out backwards and tapered so smaller in cross section at the floor than where the rails of the seat are joined. The back legs continued up to support a large square back rest with a gap between the seat and the back, where the frame is exposed, and the back was slightly wider than the uprights and rounded at the top corners so, again, a variation on the Red Chair. 

The dining table shown with those chairs was square and compact but appears to have had leaves so it could be extended and it looks as if the furniture, even at this early stage, was designed for a relatively small apartment.

A similar and rather restrained design of chair in elm was shown by Henrik Wörts in 1928.

At the Cabinetmakers' Exhibition in 1929 there was another square table with straight, vertical legs - so un-tapered - and chairs in birch designed by Viggo Sten Møller and made by Jens Peter Jensen.  The chairs have straight legs but with stretchers only at each side - so not across the back or across the centre under the seat - and the back legs above the seat were tapered and angled back at the top to support a narrower back rest - so not as deep top to bottom as on the Red Chair.

These were shown in the room setting with a dining alcove and alongside a double wardrobe, and with a neat low book case on legs with shelves and a day bed with deep drawers underneath - so again the implication is that this furniture was designed for a small apartment. A drawing of the wardrobe shows hanging space on one side, with a hat shelf at the top, and the other half is divided by shelves but the drawing shows tableware and household linen on the shelves which suggest it might even have been for a single room apartment.* It would seem that Møller was suggesting that this good, well-made furniture , with a variation of the Red Chair, was appropriate for even the smallest modern home.

this chair by Kaare Klint and made by Rud. Rasmussen was shown at the 1930 Cabinetmakers' Exhibition with a dining table designed by Rigmor Andersen

Another version of the Red Chair was shown at the Cabinetmakers' Exhibition in 1930 along with a low cabinet on a stand with sliding doors with a series of deep shelves designed to take table settings of china and glassware.

And, in the exhibition in 1932, almost the same shape of chair by Jacob Kjær in Cuban mahogany was shown but possibly because the wood was exotic and expensive the upholstered back rest was replaced by a cross rail just above the seat and a straight top rail with four simple vertical rails grouped in the centre but this is basically the same shape and form and style of chair.

 

dining table and chairs designed by O Mølgaard-Nielsen and made by the cabinetmaker Jacob Kjær - shown at the Cabinetmakers' Exhibition in 1933

A version of the Red Chair was shown in 1933 with a set of furniture designed by Orla Mølgaard-Nielsen and was described as appropriate for a three-room bungalow and a reviewer comments that the design owes much to Klint. What is interesting is that in that review of the furniture it was described as compact but the cupboard was designed to store china, glass and table linen with four sections with doors, two above two, but inside shallow trays on runners held table settings for twelve people. It implies that although the furniture was designed for a relatively modest home, the owners would probably want to be able to feed twelve people with a full set of matching china and tableware that was otherwise stored away in a well-designed piece of furniture.

All this shows that architects and the cabinet makers certainly did not see the Red Chair type as primarily an office or museum chair and by the 1940s the chair was being made in more exotic wood for middle-class buyers and was being made to look lighter and more modern.

furniture for a two-room apartment designed by Børge Mogensen - made by Erhard Rasmussen and shown at the Cabinetmakers' Exhibition in 1941

 

Given the outbreak of war in Europe, a surprisingly large number of exhibitors showed their furniture at the Cabinetmakers' Exhibition in 1941.

Børge Morgensen showed furniture in cherry wood that was made by the cabinetmaker Erbard Rasmussen for a two-room apartment but a review by a journalist from Berlingske was not particularly kind:

“The furniture for the two-room flat with a kitchen-dining room, seems to have been made for dolls, a little too fragile for full-grown adults, but the style is very nice, clean and sober. It is reasonable to assume that the personal touch will be added by the young people themselves.” 

The bedroom furniture for the exhibition apartment was by Kay Gottlob.

A chair by Henrik Wörts with cane back was shown at the Cabinetmakers' Exhibition in 1943 and the Red Chair type appears at the Cabinetmakers' Exhibition through into the 1960s … in 1961 a chair by Gunnar Magnussen and made by Søren Horn was shown which had a cane seat and back and side stretchers and a central cross rail below the seat but by then the next generation of architects and designers were prominent and the Red Chair style became less and less  popular.

note:

* IIn Copenhagen the normal way to describe an apartment is without including the kitchen or the bathroom in the number of rooms … so a one-room apartment in the 1920s had a kitchen plus one room that combined living room and bedroom and there might have been a toilet or separate bathroom although in smaller and older apartments the toilet might have been out on a landing or outside and shared and to have a bath, rather than a wash at a sink, might have meant going to a communal bath house. A two room apartment would have had a living room and a separate bedroom plus a kitchen and probably a bathroom.

chair in Cuban mahogany designed by Erik Wörts. Made by the cabinetmaker Henrik Wörts,
Shown in the Cabinetmakers' Exhibition of 1943

 

side by side

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Hans Wegner and Finn Juhl were almost the same age and The Chair, designed by Wegner, and chair NV44, by Juhl, were designed and made a few years apart, in the late 1940s. 

Both chairs are in wood, with a back rest in wood that is shaped and twisted to continue round into wood arm rests and both chairs are of a high quality - both made by skilled cabinet makers - so, ostensibly, the chairs are of the same type.* 

But clearly they are distinctly different - even if It is difficult to pin down and describe those differences - because once you have seen the chairs it would be difficult to mistake one for the other. 

If you showed both chairs to someone who knows nothing about Danish design history and asked them to give a date to the chairs, my guess would be that some people, but relatively few, would suggest the 1940s. Many would see the chair by Juhl as more traditional or more old fashioned and might push its date back - back in the century or even wonder if it was older - whereas many would be surprised that the chair by Wegner is now nearly 70 years old and might hazard a guess for its date as being in the 1960s or possibly even more recent.

 

The Chair by Hans Wegner 1949

NV44 by Finn Juhl 1944

The Chair

Hans Wegner (1914-2007)

cabinetmakers Johannes Hansen, PP Møbler
height: 76cm
width: 63cm
depth: 52 cm
height of seat: 44cm
now made in oak, ash, cherry or walnut
leather or cane

NV44

Finn Juhl (1912-1989)

cabinetmaker Niels Vodder
height: 73cm
width: 60cm
depth: 52 cm
height of seat: 47
Cuban mahogany rosewood
leather
initially only 12 examples produced

 

The NV44 by Finn Juhl is more sculptural, more dramatic - with a stronger sense of movement - so the back rail or back rest is shaped and twisted but there is a sense that the wood is still under tension and the arms are pulled outwards and the uprights are twisted out to support the arms to form a cup shape almost wrapping around the person sitting in the chair. 

There are stretchers but not between the back and front legs - as in a conventional design - but they run from the back legs and are tilted down and inwards to the centre of a deep stretcher between the front legs and that stretcher itself is curved but, surely, curved the wrong way because an arch supports and spreads weight, taking the load down and out to the ground, but a reverse arch, as here, creates the impression that the uprights are or could move together at the top. It creates a dynamic where the front of the seat itself seems almost as if it is slung between the front legs.

Obviously the arms and back rest on Wegner's design have also been cut to shape and twisted but, despite that manipulation, they seem natural and at rest. The legs of the chair are reduced down, as much as possible, by being tapered - that's why the Wegner chair is elegant - but the seat and the centre part of the leg, where the rails of the seat are joined, are strong enough and those joins, fixing the seat rail into the legs, are precisely cut and strong enough that stretchers were omitted completely.

The seat on Wegner's chair is slightly hollowed, to make it look and be more comfortable and it is wide and open - uncluttered - so it looks as if there is room to move around, however large you are, and the outward splay of the legs so wider apart at the floor than at the seat makes the chair, despite those elegant tapered legs, look stable, with the chair standing firm, calm and somehow self contained.

So is the chair by Juhl tense? If you prefer the chair designed by Finn Juhl then you might argue that the NV44 is more organic, voluptuous or sensual, and the lines and silhouette of the chair by Wegner not more pure but more mechanical.

 

Certainly the chairs could not have been more different commercially.

Finn Juhl was not concerned with commercial success or, actually, any compromise and here one suspects that Niels Vodder, the cabinetmakers, had to work hard to realise the design. It was presumably the complexity and the cost of the work that explains why, initially, only 12 chairs were produced.

In contrast, it's known that Hans Wegner collaborated closely with the cabinetmakers who used their skill and their experience, as he himself said, "cutting the elements down to the bare essentials" so together, they produced a chair that is not just rational but, from that process of simplification, it meant that, if not exactly made on a factory production line, the chair could be produced in relatively large numbers.  

The NV44 by Juhl has much more conventional upholstery with the leather taken over the frame of the seat and that meant it needed a good upholsterer with real skill - look at the piping on the edge of the leather where it is taken around the uprights supporting the back and arms - and the work could only be done on the fully finished chair. 

With the leather version of The Chair by Wegner, the leather seat and upholstery were separate and dropped into place when the chair was assembled so seat and frame could be made independently.

The design of the frame of the seat on The Chair also meant that it could be in cane … in fact the first chairs were all with cane seats and the leather covered version was introduced a year later.

That, in part, explains the success of The Chair which is still in production, made now by PP Møbler. 

And it is not just the choice of seat because The Chair was one of the first chairs where the same design could be customised to take on a different character if the customer chose a different type of wood or different finishes for the wood … the chair can take on a different character for a different setting. Not just a very beautiful chair but a bit of a chameleon.

 

note: *

ostensibly similar but in their classification of chair types at Designmuseum Danmark, the chair by Finn Juhl is described as a Chinese Chair and Wegner's chair as a Round Arm or Klismos Chair.

 
 

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 first 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 larger production runs.

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 simply for the bottoms of drawers. 

A patent was taken out in the 1790s for making a thin boards of wood from layers of veneer that were stuck together with glue but the veneer was cut by hand and relatively rough although strong. In making plywood, then as now, 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 United States 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 traditional mortice-and-tenon joins as a cabinetmaker would - 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 cut 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 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 … presumably they published the patterns and working 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.

 

shell chairs in laminated wood by Arne Jacobsen

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Ant Chair 1952,  The Tongue 1955,  chair model 3105 for Munkegård Elementary School 1955

Series 7 1955,  Side Chair 3103 from 1955,  Grand Prix 1957 ... all in the permanent collection of Designmuseum Danmark in Copenhagen

 

 

Looking posts on this site from 2017 about Danish chairs from the 20th century a major and obvious omission from the list are the shell chairs in laminated wood that were designed by Arne Jacobsen in the 1950s.

It was an amazing and productive decade for the architect when he was working on major buildings but still designing housing. Work on Munkegård Elementary School in Copenhagen started in 1951 and was completed in 1956;  the Town Hall in Rødovre was completed in 1956 and the Town Hall in Glostrup was completed in 1959. Jacobsen designed major commercial and industrial buildings in this period - including an office building for A Jespersen & Son in the centre of Copenhagen - where work started in 1952 and finished in 1955 - the Christensen factory in Aalborg and pharmaceutical factories for Novo Industri A/S in Copenhagen and for a new site at Bagsværd to the north of the city centre and from 1955 through to 1960, Jacobsen was working on the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen.

He designed several major housing schemes in that same period with both the Alléhusene housing complex and the  Jespersen row houses built in the area close to the railway station at Jægersborg - a growing suburb in the north part of Copenhagen where Jacobsen had designed housing in the 1940s - and there was a second phase of building on the coast  at Klampenborg - with the Søholm houses built just south of the Bellevue theatre and the Bellavista apartments that Jacobsen had designed in the 1930s.

For prestigious public buildings Jacobsen designed specific, custom-made, furniture but he also worked on more commercial designs with a growing demand for modern, well-designed furniture for the home. Jacobsen designed a series of shell chairs in laminated wood in collaboration with Fritz Hansen - the well-established Danish furniture manufacturer - that could be used in commercial and public buildings but were also increasingly popular for use in ordinary homes.

These chairs included model FH3100 known as the Ant Chair that was designed in 1952; model FH3102 or The Tongue - a small chair for children designed originally for Munkegård School in Copenhagen but later made in a larger version; from 1955 model FH3105 - another chair produced for Munkegård - and from that same year model FH3103 with a more pronounced curve between the seat and the back with a broader and deeper and squarer upper part to provide better support for the lower back and the shoulder blades.

The Series 7 - model FH3107 - the most famous of these laminated chairs - also dates from 1955 and is still the best-selling chair produced by Fritz Hansen.

Then, last in this series of shell chairs, the Grand Prix - model FH4130 - designed in 1957 and made in several versions.

The form of these chairs - with a moulded shell in laminated wood - divides them - visually and, in terms of construction and manufacture, into two distinct parts with a seat and back to the chair in one material - the shell in laminated and moulded wood - and a base or support that was made separately in another material.

This clear division of the production process could be exploited because it allowed the manufacturer to make different versions of a chair by providing options for distinctly different bases that changed not just the character of the chair but often also the way that the chair was used and where it was used …

  • most of the chairs could be purchased with thin metal legs that were bent under the shell and held in place on a fixing plate. These legs were compact and light in weight so the chairs could be used in a house or in a small apartment as a dining chair or a general chair
  • for several of the designs, there was an option for a support of legs in bentwood if a customer preffered a chair that looked more traditional
  • nearly all the chairs could be stacked and, although they were light, they were surprisingly robust, and came to be used in offices and canteens and meeting rooms
  • for several of the shaped and moulded chairs, there were options for a single vertical metal column that could be fixed in tiered rows for seating in a lecture theatre
  • most of the chairs had an option for a cross-shaped metal base, usually light-weight aluminium, that could be fitted with a swivel mechanism and/or castors for use at a desk so they could be used as an office chair
  • and - most unlikely of all - the simple and compact shell of the Tongue chair, designed initially as a chair for a child, was upholstered in leather and set on a high fixed metal column with a swivel mechanism for a bar stool at the SAS Royal Hotel.

These chairs are deceptively simple but, in production, the moulding process presented challenges.

The chairs that were designed by Alvar Alto and manufactured in Finland from the 1930s were the first Nordic designs to exploit the properties of laminated and moulded wood in the commercial production of furniture. The layers of wood veneer were curved into different forms under pressure so the shape was 'remembered' when the wood was taken from the press but although those chairs by Alto had the seat and back from a single piece of laminated wood, the curve was in one plane so that it formed, in effect, a scroll.

Trying to mould the laminated wood into more complex curves, either hollow or convex and in both directions across the shell, Fritz Hansen put the material under considerably more stress.

The challenges might seem to be relatively simple …

  • to use the thinnest possible gauge of plywood to stop the piece from looking crude or being heavy
  • to source high quality, unblemished and even or consistent veneer … plywood for construction can have patches or uneven colour but for these chairs the shell was just sanded and finished to maintain the natural qualities of the timber so a good or an interesting grain pattern can also be important
  • to bend as sharp a curve as possible between the seat and the back without the facing layers of the finished shell delaminating - so folding on the inner face of a curve or splitting on the outer face
  • to create complex curves that were hollow or concave front to back - so it was not like sitting on a plank - but also curved across the width, so from side to side which, in effect, anticipates the curve under the weight of a person sitting down - to avoid that feeling of it sinking in like sitting down on, or rather, in a canvas chair
  • to create those complex curves without cutting into and overlapping sections of the shell
  • to develop ways of fixing the thin shell to any form of leg or support … you cannot fix a leg unit with screws through the leg and straight into the shell from below, because the shell is too thin, but if you fix screws or bolts from above, driven down into the leg or base, then those are exposed and you would be sitting on the screw or bolt heads

On that last point, the first version of the Grand Prix had four L-shaped and moulded leg pieces stuck to the underside of the shell with a glue developed for that purpose but, I presume, under stress, the glue delaminated the facing layer of the shell so in later versions the design was changed to a cross-shaped and self-supporting framework of legs that was fixed to a plywood plate at the centre of the underside of the seat in a similar way to the fixing of the metal legs.

For comfort, there must have been extensive trials to adjust the flexibility of the shell and the strength, weight and flexibility of the legs or base - particular where the chair has legs in thin bent tube metal. Too flexible and the chair would feel unstable but too rigid and it would be like plonking down on a park bench. The chairs also use rubber spacers or buffers set further out from the centre fixing plate to hold the legs free of the shell; provide some control to the flexibility of the shell and also stop the legs torqueing or twisting or shifting round.

L1170907.jpg

The view of the underside of a Series 7 Chair shows just how complex and how subtle the design of the shaping of the metal legs is with the cross pieces of the legs under the seat protruding beyond the edge of the seat - so that the chairs could be stacked - and with the metal curved downwards towards the centre to follow the shape of the moulded seat rather than sitting against it. The legs are also angled outwards - rather than being set vertical - which in part makes the chair appear lighter and more elegant - strictly vertical legs can look basic or stolid - but also provides extra stability for a light chair.

There is an interesting but more general point about the shell chairs designed by Jacobsen and made by Fritz Hansen. We are now so familiar with major Scandinavian design companies like Muuto or Normann producing chairs with a range of bases and a range of colours and covers along with options for plain shells or upholstered versions, that we no longer see that as unusual - or, actually, we take that for granted because we expect a number of options when choosing a design. Before these chairs were produced by Fritz Hansen in the 1950s, chairs were designed as a complete or self-contained entity with production in relatively small numbers but, if there were options or variations, it might be that a different material could be used for the frame - so asking for a chair to be made in mahogany rather than oak for instance - or would be limited to selecting leather rather than textile for an upholstered chair.

At most, the scale of a chair might be adapted for a later version so Rud Rasmussen produced the Red Chair designed by Kaare Klint in a smaller size as a dining chair where the original, was wider with more generous proportions, designed for the meeting room at the Design Museum. Chairs like the Thonet Chair from Austria, produced through the second half of the 19th century, was made in large numbers and was made to be transported in parts and assembled on delivery but that was unusual and there were different models or different styles but no options within each type of chair. Several of the chairs designed  at the Bauhaus were conceived as relatively cheap furniture of a high quality of design for a large market but politics and events overtook their wider marketing and if there were options it was usually with the same frame but with a choice between a chair with arms and one without. Alvar Alto, through the company Artek, certainly understood the commercial potential of marketing and international sales but it was the American company Herman Miller, marketing the designs of Charles and Ray Eames, and Fritz Hansen marketing the designs of Arne Jacobsen who really established the potential for large-scale production of well-designed furniture in the years through the late 1940s and the 1950s.

Republic of Fritz Hansen

note:

Shell chairs for the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen - including the Egg and the Swan - were designed in this same period - in the mid 1950s - but were made in foam and upholstered so presented different problems and resulted in a very different aesthetic so they will be the subject of a separate set of posts.

Webbing

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

 

 

In 1942, when the cabinetmakers Rud. Rasmussem made a 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 but 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 then, as paper cord became popular in the 1940s, linen or canvas webbing became 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 … even then, it can be difficult to keep the tension consistent 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 cord can be taken across curved seat frames or around spindles or down through slots that were cut to avoid or get 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 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 chairs. 

 

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

 

the paper cord seat of a Wishbone chair

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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 side rails are not parallel - so 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 - rather like the X like you see on the back of most 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 actually 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.

 

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 there are 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 so 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 its right place in local or social history or into 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 that is important.

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 often 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 even always the best way to arrange different objects but the easiest way 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.