Snedkernes Efterårsudstilling - The Cabinetmakers’ Autumn Exhibition 2016
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"All the exhibits are prototypes of new forms, new techniques and new ways of understanding and using furniture, and many of them rest on a foundation of extraordinary craftsmanship realised in a partnership between designers and manufacturers."
Claus Mølgaard, chairman of the Cabinetmakers' Autumn Exhibition.
With the theme Pitch Black - Shadows and Transparency and with the Lapidarium of the Kings in Christian IV's Brewhouse in Copenhagen as the venue then the Cabinetmakers' Autumn Exhibition could hardly have been more dramatic.
To explain a little more for anyone who does not know about the annual exhibition or does not know the building …..
The Snedkernes or Cabinetmakers' association currently has 87 members who are craftsmen, manufacturers or designers. As the association is not commercial, the Autumn exhibition is not a furniture trade show … actually, the opposite, as it is an opportunity for the members to experiment with new materials, try out new ideas, demonstrate skills and interest that might be inhibited within a strictly commercial budget and it is a chance to be controversial or even outrageous. What makes the exhibition even more interesting is that designers and makers have to work in pairs and the committee also invites guests, who are not members of the association, to submit work.
Each year the exhibition has a specific theme and for this Autumn it was Pitch Black to explore the idea of the black line on paper … the draft … and those opposing qualities of transparency and shadow.
The Brewhouse of Christian IV was built in 1608 and is on the harbour in the centre of Copenhagen, close to Christiansborg and immediately south of the Arsenal. It is in brick and on a massive scale as it's primary function was to keep the Court and the Danish Navy supplied with beer. Gardens behind the modern Royal Library, between the library and Christiansborg, was actually an enclosed dock in the 17th century where armaments from the Arsenal, with sails and rigging for battle and food and supplies could be loaded onto fighting ships under the protection of the castle. Although beer was produced on an industrial scale the Brewhouse, as a building, is far from our modern idea of a factory … it has massive beams and posts and relatively low spaces over several floors and is similar in its form to the construction of early warehouses in the city - it has massive posts across the otherwise open spaces with beams and heavy braces and now has very uneven floors in dirt or, above, in brick or tile and with substantial sill beams from the floor structure running across.
Since 2014 it has housed the Lapidarium - a collection of sculptures that have been moved here from the royal gardens or from royal palaces as either the figures and the carved panels of decoration became surplus to current need or more often as they became worn and damaged and new copies were put in place but the originals conserved. They themselves are amazing works of art, with Greek gods, equestrian sculptures of Christian V as a Roman emperor and a full-scale model for that work in plaster and, in complete contrast, there are a series of larger-than-life Nordic peasant farmers and fishermen in traditional costumes. These various figures and animals and vast swags of decoration and portrait busts are in pale stone or, where they are first models for subsequent carved works, they are in plaster but for this exhibition all the windows of the building on the ground and first floor have been blanked out and the furniture of the cabinetmakers set in tight pools of light from spots so the sculpture loomed in the background or sunk back into the gloom.
Exhibition design was by the Copenhagen architects Norm. They designed the cabinetmakers' exhibition last year that was shown at Øregård, a fine villa in a park just to the north of the city, and the contrast between the two exhibitions could not be greater … then the furniture was set on mirrors and in front of large sash windows looking out over the gardens so all light and reflection. At the Lapidarium it is drama and shadow. If this sounds like hyperbole or rather melodramatic then it should be pointed out that visitors could ask for torches and the photographs here, if anything, give greater illumination as the camera made the best it could of the low light.
I went back several times to the exhibition because it was not just amazing and the quality of the craftsmanship superb but within that shadow, in a space that was somehow muffled from the sounds and bustle of the city outside, there were incredibly important ideas raised.
For a start, and particularly in Scandinavia, modern domestic interiors, more often than not, have furniture in pale timber, plain light walls and large windows to bring in as much light as possible. However, if you go out to Frilandsmuseet, to the open air museum to the north of Copenhagen, you soon realise that for Denmark that is an aesthetic that develops through the late 18th and 19th century first for the gentry, wealthier farmers and merchants who could afford glass for larger and larger windows and expensive candles and lighting for the evenings but for most the interiors of their homes remained dark, even quie enclosed and gloomy through the day, and often full of smoke so it was only in the 20th century, with electricity for artificial lighting and with more space and with larger and larger windows that light could become something that could be taken for granted by everyone and not just through the day but through the evening and into the night. Of course I'm not suggesting we go back to huddle round a fire, using tallows or oil lamps to stretch out the short winter days, but in fact the exhibition showed that shadow and drama are missing from most homes and it is shadow or at least uneven light and light at an angle rather than light that floods a room that can show both the form and the texture of a work. Light, if used brutally, flattens shapes and bleaches out tone and subtlety.
Flexible Standard by Carlo Volf
Many different ideas were explored in the furniture. Several pieces looked at the idea of multiples to construct a complex sculpture. Flexible Standard by Carlo Volf and Copenhagen's Technical School has a set of chairs with variations in the colour of the finish but also, although they appeared to be a set, they explored different angles and arrangements of the legs and frames. Stacking Chair by Ditte Hammerstrøm is a simple and square skeleton or frame of legs, seat and back without any upholstery or solid infill but these are joined and stacked as a towering grid through which you can see the nearby life-size equestrian statues. A Stack of Chairs by Marie Berri & Tinna Sommer and made by Anton Balle A/S in black stained ash was exactly that - a stack - almost tumbling over themselves - but held firmly with holes in the seat of each stool to take the rounded end of a leg of the stool balanced on top.
Stabelstol - Stacking Chair by Ditte Hammerstrøm and produced by JM Rør A/S
Several pieces explored unusual materials or unusual combinations of materials. 3 in 1 by James Stoklund and Sine Riggaard and made by Hans Knudsen Instituttet is deceptively simple with two sheets of anodised aluminium cut starkly and simply as two inverted L shapes that appear to lean against each other but one slots through the other and they are held together by a great wedge of wood for the back of the chair that is driven down through another slot like a giant version of the tusk tenon found in the roofs of industrial and agricultural buildings. In complete contrast, Depping & Jørgensen for Chair used metal piping and PA GF-print, which I take to have been computer printed, to produce what appears to be a more conventional form of chair with a curved back piece running round into arm rests but stunningly beautiful in the precision of the work and the complex and elegant curves of the seat and back. Darkness Falls by Monique Engelund & Mathilde Witt Mølholm and produced by Anton Balle A/S looked initially like an overblown scroll of plywood on a steel frame to form a chair but is, in fact, a thin sheet of Corian, draped across the frame like a giant strip of pasta left to dry.
Darkness Falls by Monique Engelund & Mathilde Witt Mølholm produced by Anton Balle A/S
3 in 1 by James Stoklund & Sine Ringgaard manufactured by Aluscan A/S
Chair by Depping & Jørgensen
Some of the pieces used complex structures to create pattern so Restless, a bench by Christina Strand in laser-cut steel had a fretwork cut out along the gently zigzagged seat and across the back that formed amazing patterns of shadows across the floor. Foersom & Hiort-Lorenzen used rattan to form a huge cushion made by Cane-line that looks like a giant bird's nest.
Restless by Christina Strand
Black Nest by Foersom & Hiort-Lorenzen manufactured by Cane-line
Trio by Henrik Sørig Thomsen manufactured by Kvist Industries
Some works took what appeared to be a conventional form or a conventional idea and explored alternatives by subverting what we expect. Several works deliberately challenged conventions. Trio by Henrik Sørig Thomsen and produced by Kvist Industries was three-legged stools that are a development of the classic Alto Stool 60 but here, in stained oak, and the legs are taken through the seat, rather than under it, to meet at the centre.
One or two pieces seemed to explore gothic or medieval motifs … the idea of the dark ages of the medieval period, so often used in the 18th century to emphasise a contrast with the knowledge and openness of the enlightenment … the age of light. Arch Table designed by Jonas Trampedach and made by Claus Mølgaard has an oak top with a black oil finish but is supported on elegant arches in lacquered aluminium, like a skeleton vault, and with the scale of a medieval banquet table. Freedom, Equality and Love by Søren Ulrik Petersen and produced by Ejnar P & PP Møbler is in hardwood with a traditional paper string seat that has a pair of arches to form the back.
Arch Table by Jonas Trampedach and produced by Claus Mølgaard
Frihed, Lighed og Kærlighed - Freedom, Equality and Love by Søren Ulrik Petersen and made by Ejnar P & PP Møbler
Sort Mare - Black Incubus by Henckel & Sievers
Lise and Hans Isbrand used ash, taken to elegant limits perhaps only possible in that fine-grained timber, but with a fascinating detail of construction. For their pair of chairs, Symphony, the front and back rails that support the seat are thin and straight, like rods, but the seat curves gently down to the centre and slits, cut along the front and back edges, means that it bends through the line of the rails which emerge through the slits to hold or fix seat and frame together.
Symfoni - Symphony by Lise and Hans Isbrand
Nearly all the furniture used dark materials or stain to darken light wood. Sorte Mare - Black Incubus - by Henckel & Sievers is in pine but the long low seat or recliner looks like wind-blown fabric.
Many pieces showed amazing craftsmanship that managed to break through the gloom. Fly by Hannes Stephensen and made in stained ash by Egeværk is an amazing chair with a seat formed with gently curved and precisely made slats splayed out to form the seat but with the back formed by a series of separate wedges graduated by size and strung almost like teeth or tusks on a tribal necklace. The Black Box by Mogens Toft and produced by Andrea Thorsøe of Stockholm is in Maple with an outer frame of squared timber and what appear to be a set of conventional drawers but an ingenious mechanism means that these can be pulled out in any direction and that reveals pale creamy white interiors.
The Black Box by Mogens Toft and produced by Andrea Thorsøe Stokholm
The piece that I kept going back to and walking round and round was Baroque Table by Lise Bjerre Schmidt and Sofie Trier Mørk of Wednesday Architecture and made by Mikkel Magnussen. Elements of open frame slide in but rest at an angle and there are what appear to be gate legs set at angles but with the whole seeming to reference sewing-machine tables or something for a compositor of type from a printers.
Baroque Table Lise Bjerre Schmidt & Sofie Trier Mørk of Wednesday Architecture and made by the cabinetmaker Mikkel Magnussen
So perhaps, overall, by blurring boundaries between function and presentation piece, these works become the modern equivalent of guild master work, and the most important idea that emerged so strongly here was that pieces of furniture really can challenge our preconceptions and really can make us stop and think and in that and, as here, as unique pieces they can be as relevant as a work of art as a drawing or a painting or a sculpture. Here was revived that old idea of the Conversation Piece.
Black Hole, designed by Örnduvald and produced by Thyge Braad Hansen
Forklaedet som stol - Disguised as a chair by Nils-Ole Zib
The Brewhouse of Christian IV and the Lapidarium
Only a few of the pieces could be included here, so there are photographs of all the furniture in the exhibition in a separate post with some information about the designers and cabinetmakers and it is important to go to Snedkernes Efterårsudstilling - an online catalogue by the association for the exhibition that has photographs taken both in the dark and in the light.