Halyard

/

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.

 

country furniture

/

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

 

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

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

Upholstery was also an expensive job that required a specialist so seats were either simply flat wood planks or possibly wood hollowed out but rush and cane or even rope were used woven over a frame for chair seats. Simple seat cushions could be made from a tough fabric with a filling of straw or animal hair - using the same materials and techniques as making a mattress.

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Church Chair by Kaare Klint

Chair for Nyborg Library by Hans Wegner

side by side

/

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.

 
 

PP Møbler

/

detail of pp112 designed by Hans Wegner in 1978

 

 

In 1953 PP Møbler was founded by the brothers Lars Peder and Ejnar Pedersen in Allerød - a small town north Copenhagen. They started as traditional cabinetmakers …  the first chair made in the workshops was the Pot Chair - designed by Nanna and Jørgen Ditzel - that was produced by the upholstery company AP  Stolen but with PP Møbler subcontracted to make the frame.

Then they produced the frame for another important upholstered chair from AP Stolen - the Papa Bear Chair designed by Hans Wegner. He was impressed by the quality of the work - even though it was to be hidden by upholstery - and that was the beginning of one of the most important partnerships in the history of modern Danish furniture.

The collaboration with Wegner was close … he challenged the cabinetmakers to think in new ways and they responded by not only developing new methods and techniques for bending and joining wood to realise the designs but they were also prepared to challenge and criticise and contribute suggestions in the development of any new chairs. 

In 1969 Wegner designed pp201 - his first chair that was specifically and exclusively for the company - and he encouraged PP Møbler to become an independent brand with their own products and their own sales department to sell furniture under their own name. He even designed a new company logo.

Circle Chair designed by Hand Wegner and produced by PP Møbler since 1986

 

PP Møbler now also have a licence to produce earlier designs by Hans Wegner - with rights to make pieces originally produced by the cabinetmakers Johannes Hansen after they closed in 1990 - so they make some of the best-known chairs designed by Wegner including the Round Chair, the Minimal Chair, the Peacock Chair, Valet Chair and Tub Chair.

Ejnar Pedersen was certain that craftsmen had to have pride in their work in order to maintain standards so the company have remained traditional cabinetmakers. They have a huge respect for wood, retaining traditional methods of cutting and finishing but they are also aware of the need to develop and move forward so they make it clear that technology is not a substitute but should enhance “the craftsman's field of skills.”

They have developed computer-controlled milling machine for precision cutting and shaping - seen clearly on the Cow Horn Chair from 1952, with the two parts of the back joined by a comb in contrasting wood, and for the cutting and shaping and joins for the back of The Round Chair which are seen from every angle so even slight imperfections would be obvious.

Tub Chair pp530 designed by Hans Wegner in 1954

 

They produce a number of very complicated and demanding designs that tests the skills of the cabinetmakers ….  the Chinese Chair by Wegner pp66 from 1943 - where the back is formed from a length of wood that has been compressed and then bent in three dimensions - the Tub Chair that has a double bent shell - one bent - one bent and twisted - the Peacock Chair designed from 1947 and the Flag Halyard Chair with a metal frame strung with rope that Wegner designed in 1950. 

PP Møbler have produced a prestigious group of experimental designs that pushed conventions including the bentwood chair by Poul Kjærholm from 1978.

Several chairs remained as prototypes for many years until the machines and techniques were developed including the machine that was necessary to make the hoop of wood for the Circle Halyard Chair designed in the 1960s but finally realised in 1986  and the Chinese Bench pp266 that was finally put into production in 1991 with the development of advanced pre-compressed and bending techniques.

PP Møbler

Webbing

/

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

/
 

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.

 

chair CH22 by Hans Wegner

/

At Carl Hansen & Søn, during the 3daysofdesign events, the CH22 chair, designed by Hans Wegner in 1950, was given prominence in the showroom in Bredgade because it is now back in production and will be released at a special launch today, Friday 3rd June.

Along with the Wishbone Chair, the CH22 was one of the first chairs designed by Wegner for Carl Hansen and helped establish the strong partnership between the designer and the company that continued until the end of his life.

The CH22 is low with wooden arms and broad flat elbow rests and a deep oval-shaped wood back rest that has a shallow curve and strongly rounded corners that appears to be a development of the Shell Chair from 1948. Like the Wishbone chair, the CH22 has tapered side rails where the underside is horizontal but the top edge drops down by about 3 degrees from the back to the front.

A distinct feature of the chair frame are curved and shaped vertical supports that have been described as looking rather like axe handles. These rise up from the side rails, halved across the sides of the seat, and housed into the underside of the arm rest … a form of construction that is not that common in designs by Wegner but is reminiscent of the Colonial Chair designed by Ole Wanscher in 1949. This contributes to giving the chair a more-distinct look of the 1950s than many designs by Wegner. Of course in part that is what makes it’s reintroduction by the company now so appropriate as there is a rapidly-growing appreciation of the interior design of the late 40s and 50s.

 
 
 

Wegner is acknowledged as a master of ergonomics: he designed extremely comfortable chairs. What is discussed less is that he designed very different chairs, experimenting with different forms of construction, various techniques of production and various possible functions for different designs. The height of the seat and its pitch, on a specific chair, or the angle and length of the chair arms, and so on, will all effect how people sit in a chair and how they use it. Of course Wegner also appreciated that, after a few minutes, people shift or move in the chair and he tried to allow for that.

Another variable is the proportions of the person sitting in the chair … their height of course but particularly the distance from the back of the knee to the base of the spine and the distance from the base of the spine to the small of the back. That means that really you should not buy a chair just because the look or the style appeals … you have to choose carefully the chair that is comfortable for you and the chair that suits best how and how often you will use it, what you will be doing while you are sitting in the chair, and, rather more personal, your normal posture … prim and upright or tending to slump … to put it rudely

I asked if I could try out the CH22 in Bredgade. What struck me was that by far the most comfortable position for me in this chair was to push the base of my spine back into the angle between seat and the back and to sit with a more upright posture. The response was a smile from Morten Hansen. That was why, he said, or, at least, that was one of the reasons why, the company has released this design now. 

They have identified one interesting change in the sort of chair people need and a new way in which they use chairs while they work on certain tasks. 

Surely sitting in a chair is sitting in a chair and always was and always will be you say. Well no. Through the medieval period and in fact well into the 17th century, chairs tended to be a symbol of status and most people sat on stools or for meals sat on benches. In the 18th and 19th centuries chairs became much more common and were rather upright with a relatively high seat - around 18” above the ground - for what is generally defined now as a dining chair. Lower chairs with arms to be used when relaxing are, in crude design history terms, a distinct type of the 19th and 20th centuries. 

Sitting at a desk to work meant initially sitting on something close to a dining chair although for most work it was generally better to do without arm rests to the chair which can restrict the elbows as the hands move across the desk. All sorts of office chair appeared through the 20th century from chairs on castors to chairs that rose up or dropped down as they were spun on a vertical thread - often wooden - like a giant corkscrew. When personal computers first became common they were initially on the desk-top or beside the desk and a standard desk chair was normally used even if the posture was not quite right for long periods of work at a key board and monitor or screen. 

Carl Hansen & Søn have realised that with the increasing popularity of lap-top and tablet computers, a different chair is appropriate .… the CH22, with its deeper, wider, and lower seat - about 14" from the ground to front edge of the seat - and with its broad, flat, arms that support the elbows but with a more upright spine support gives a comfortable position for a distinct form of chair for a new way of working. Of course, that’s not to say this is a design with one use … more an interesting and good design that actually happens to be really comfortable if you are sitting down to work on a laptop computer.