Denmark's Next Classics

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This is the last opportunity to see Denmark’s Next Classics at Designmuseum Danmark.

The exhibition shows the work of five designers who took part in a series on Danish television in the Spring that sought to find new designs that could become design classics in the coming years.

From each designer there is a dining chair, a dining table that can be extended, a pendant light, furniture for children, a sofa and a lænestol or arm chair.

With sketches and models for the designs and with audio-visual material - including clips and interviews from the programmes - Denmark’s Next Classics explores the process of design.

The designers are Janus Larsen, Isabel Ahm, Rasmus B Fex, Kasper Thorup and Rikke Frost.

Judges for the competition were Anne-Louise Sommer - professor of design and now director of Designmuseum Danmark - and the designer Kasper Salto.

Denmark’s Next Classics
at Designmuseum Danmark until 1 September 2019

the six programmes can still be viewed
on line through the DR site

 

the recent launch of three new chairs from TAKT

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Design X Change at Designmuseum Danmark two weeks ago was my first chance to see the three new chairs that were launched a month before by a new Danish furniture company called TAKT.

Not only are the designs new but the marketing is innovative because, from the start, the company will market on-line direct to their customers. By keeping the cost of marketing as low as possible "in a transparent way" and by using sustainable materials, then they can "make quality goods more accessible."

With this approach and by working with a number of established designers, they clearly echo the principles of FDB in the 1940s and 1950s when they first marketed good-quality modern furniture designed by well-established designers to make good, well-made furniture of a high quality.

In this initial launch by TAKT there are three chairs. Design and development took 18 months and the chairs are made for them by the furniture maker Kvist - a well established Danish company.

The chairs are beautifully and precisely made and well finished. By focusing on perfectly-cut joinery with well-designed mortices or pegs or channels to hold the separate pieces together, then the parts of the chair can be thinner and therefore lighter in weight.

Each chair has a distinct character but you can see links between the designs … for a start they all make the best use of high-quality plywood for seats and back rests and the Tool Chair designed by Rasmus Palmgren is almost a text-book example of how to exploit all the best characteristics of plywood. The plywood of the seat is bent down on each side to give it strength and the front edge is simply held in a channel is a front frame in bent wood and the vertical sides are flared out at the back to form tabs that act like mortices to hold the seat into the bent-wood frame of the back.

Cross Chair by English designers has echoes of the classic stacking chair designed by Vilhelm Wohlert in the 1950s for the art museum at Louisiana. The TAKT chair has two h-shaped frames that cross over under the seat using interlocking slots at the intersection and giving the chair its name. The curved back rest, fixed across the uprights, is simple and elegant but what is impressive is the way it clicks into place as you assemble the chair because Cross Chair is delivered packed flat. That click is testament to the precision of the cutting of the joints that gives the chair a sense of precise engineering unusual with timber. Another very nice detail is that the ends of the cross rails are curved down - to drop the tenon down further where it is housed in a mortice at the top of the front legs but the top of the leg is also just slightly lower so does not press hard against the underside of the seat to give a more refined design and a slight emphasis to the line of the seat by having that space.

The third chair, Soft Chair by the Danish designer Thomas Bentzen, has a strong sense of Danish design from the late 1960s rather than the 1950s with distinct and marked verticals - so with echoes of the Ferry Chair by Wegner. The legs are a uniform thickness rather than being tapered and are vertical, rather than splaying out, and there are horizontal stretchers or cross rails between the legs. This framework supports an ingenious seat and backrest in plywood where both are curved sharply round at the edge to grasp the frame. It looks almost like leather draped across the frame but there are clever fixings holding both seat and back in place. Despite the apparent complexity of the design it has strong parts with simple fixings so again it is delivered flat.

Part of the team at TAKT is Nicholai de Gier who teaches at the Royal Academy. He wrote a seminal work on chair design - Chairs' Tectonics that was published by The Royal Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture in 2009. In the book he classifies the form of construction for different types of chair and that same attention to detail and detailed understanding not only of style but techniques of construction is applied to the new collection from TAKT. It is important to emphasise that it is a strong part of the Danish design tradition to reference earlier designs but take them forward or experiment with alternative solutions to specific problems.

TAKT have a good on-line site - crucial for this form of marketing - that links to an 'image bank' with photographs of the chairs from all angles and with photographs of details.

Looking at the chairs as you walk around them you can see respected here a clear aim in classic Danish design to make furniture that is beautiful from any angle.

 TAKT

The display at Design X Change was in a marquee in the great central courtyard of the design museum. It is a very pleasant temporary venue for museum events but the light was oddly flat and not good for taking photographs. The team from TAKT were incredibly patient and let me take chairs outside to take photographs. Please note however that these chairs are not designed or made for garden use.

 
 

Tool Chair

Designed by Rasmus Palmgren from Finland
Beech
natural, black, grey, pale blue, mid blue
FSC-certified wood

delivered assembled

Cross Chair

by English designers Luke Pearson and Tom Lloyd of Pearson Lloyd
Oak and matt black
an option is to have the seat upholstered in the eco-labelled wool Hallingdal from Kvadrat or aniline leather
FSC-certified wood

Soft Chair

by the Danish designer Thomas Bentzen
Ash
FSC-certified wood

 

why does Denmark produce so many 'good' chairs?

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the display of chairs at Designmuseum Danmark

 

 

We are distinguished from other animals because not only do we live in family groups but, generally, we cultivate rather than simply gather food and herd animals rather than just track and hunt meat - so we tend to settle in one place - and tend to sleep under cover, rather than out in the open or up in a tree, so build ourselves permanent homes. We have complex languages for communication so we need to be with people and concentrating on what they are saying; we can cook our food rather than simply eat it raw; tend to eat together rather than on our own; and we walk upright on two legs which means that, after doing all that, we also need to sit down rather a lot.

I was reminded just how important sitting down together can be when looking at the seats shown at Side by Side for the Cabinetmakers' Autumn exhibition at Designmuseum Danmark. These works explored ideas about how we sit together - although specifically for that exhibition how we sit down together outside - hence the full title of the exhibition being Side by Side Outside - and the designers and cabinetmakers explored how the shape and arrangement of seats influences how we react or respond to other people. A work entitled Tingsted by Troels Flensted was particularly interesting because he looked back to ancient seating for inspiration … to low stones set in a circle outside a village as a place for assemblies or meetings. So people don't just sit down but sit down together and for lots of different reasons.

Side by Side Outside - the Cabinetmakers' Autumn Exhibition at Designmuseum Danmark

Tingsted by Troels Flensted was inspired by the stone circles used in the past for village meetings ... here the seats in terrazzo have a slight lip at the back so not strictly a stool. Check when you see someone on a low stool ... there is a tendency to sit too far back with the stool under the legs rather than supporting to spine so one crucial role for a chair is to set the most comfortable posture.

Fette Fingre / Fingers Lovingly Intertwined by Hannes Stephensen and the cabinetmaker Kristian Frandsen ... a variation on what is sometimes called a loving seat or kissing seat but here the chairs can be spun towards or away from the other person to change the dynamics of the conversation ... chairs as an intermediary

Mange Bænke Små / Little Strokes Fell Great Oaks by Sussi Osmark shows how, even in the rain, people sit down and the dynamics of the relationship changes with how you sit.

Arc by Hans Sandgren Jakobsen ... sometimes a chair is not large enough 

 

 

There can be very few modern homes in Europe that do not have chairs, or at least one chair, as part of the moveable or re-moveable furniture. So chairs are common - in fact just about ubiquitous. But have we reached an interesting point where the way we use chairs and which type of chair we need is changing?

Certainly we are seeing much-discussed changes in family dynamics … more people than ever before live in towns and cities rather than the country; more and more people have less personal space; in western Europe more and more people live alone but even in family groups much less significance is given to eating together at the same time … and if we do sit down to eat with other people then it tends to be in a public rather than in our private space … so in a restaurant or café or canteen … so formal sets of dining chairs are less and less common. 

In fact, dining chairs set around a dining table and left like that even when no one is eating was 'normal' for a relatively short period of the history of the home and only at a certain social levels so in middle-class homes through the 19th and 20th centuries. Look at paintings of 18th-century interiors and the common arrangement was to pull chairs back to stand against the wall after the meal and often a table was brought in just for the meal or, if it had leaves or flaps or possibly if it was made in sections, it too would be moved back away from the centre of the room. Even in large prestigious houses from the middle ages onwards and then later in farmhouse kitchens and inns there were more often long benches at long tables rather than chairs.

So how and why and when did having more chairs and more chairs with specific functions become important?

Certainly, through the last century, we can see a tendency to have more chairs and different types of chair in our homes than we do now … so there might be side chairs in the entrance hall - a place to sit and put on or take off shoes or as somewhere to drop a coat or a bag - there might be a desk chair in the study, a dressing-table chair in the bedroom, a set of dining chairs, of course, but also possibly rather different and more basic chairs for eating at a kitchen table, and even another set of similar chairs for sitting out in the garden or on a balcony to eat and a much higher chair at a 'cocktail bar' in the 'lounge' if that was the way you lived.

And outside the home there are still more and very specific types of chairs for lecture theatres, waiting rooms or cafeterias … although it is interesting to see that posh restaurants seem to mirror or better what is found in a private home … and usually there are highly specialised chairs in the barbers and the dentists surgery.

Chairs have to be well made because we don't sit still for long and that puts considerable stress on the components of a chair and on the way the parts are joined together and, generally, we expect chairs to be relatively light … any chair can be strong if it is over engineered in hefty materials … but we want to move chairs around.

More often than not we look for chairs that are both stylish and relatively unusual because people do still use the chairs they buy to express their own view of their own status. 

Of course, some homes can have cheap chairs from a flea market or simple chairs, utility chairs, from a department store that are paired with expensive carpets or valuable paintings on the walls but that is pretty rare. Normally expensive and carefully-thought through homes have expensive and carefully chosen chairs.

If anyone visits us at home then about the first thing they are offered - after perhaps somewhere to put their coat and the use of the toilet - is a chair and it is possible that through their entire visit, the only piece of our furniture that they come in direct contact with is one of our chairs. They may only look at and admire, or not, our other pieces of furniture.

Poul Henningsen 1932

Arne Jacobsen 1970

Poul Kjærholm 1953

Johannes Foersom & Peter Hiort-Lorenzen 1996

Nanna Ditzel - Trinidad 1993

Poul Kjærholm 1952

If people who are not Danish are asked to describe a Danish chair they will use words and phrases like well-made, clean lines, natural pale wood ... so these chairs -selected from the chairs shown in Designmuseum Danmark - show that Danish designers have always pushed the boundaries to make us reassess what we assume should be the shape or form of a chair

 
 

Many readers, having got this far, will be saying that this is all pretty obvious. But curiously, although we spend so much time sitting down and although most people complain if a chair is uncomfortable, we don't often think about or talk about or mention or consider how many different types of chair construction there are or even about how the design of a chair should reflect what materials are used to make the chair.

If someone talks about their new car then most people listening want to know if it is a sports car or an estate car; a people carrier or an off-road vehicle and possibly much much more detail along with makers name and even colour and often the size of the engine. That information will all be logged away and used to assess (or do I mean judge) your choice. Tell someone you have just bought some new dining chairs and they might ask you where you bought them, or then again might not, but curiously, as soon as they walk into your house, an immediate and rapid assessment can be made, as fast or faster than any social media phone app, that will judge cost, style, possible comfort or not, your taste and what you are trying to say about your view of your own status. And all that from a chair and before they have even sat down on it.

In part the variety of chairs in a design store is, in some ways, simply a practical matter of numbers because in our lives we just get through more chairs. I'm only on my second bed, not counting beds when I was a child, and second ever dining table of my own and I've only had three sofas and the first of those was a soft foam sofa from Habitat that flipped out and was bought after I left university … brilliant for guests but with no frame, just foam - the bed not the guests - and eventually it disintegrated. I have nine chairs in my apartment right now and I can think of at least twelve others that have come and then gone on to other people through my adult life. Gone on to other people … interesting … I've only just realised that none have ended in a skip … not because of a saintly attitude to recycling but because you can usually find a new home for an old chair.

So why are chairs generally more important than we might normally acknowledge and why are chairs so important in Danish design? And no, he adds quickly, it's not because Danes spend more time than other Europeans sitting down.

Again the Side by Side exhibition, or specifically the film that accompanied the exhibition, provided some important clues about Danish chairs. Until around 1900 furniture in the countryside, for homes on farms or in villages in Denmark, were made either by the families themselves or by jobbing carpenters and village joiners. In towns, and particularly in a wealthy city like Copenhagen, similar chairs to the country chairs would be found in the homes of poorer families but furniture for the wealthy and for the larger and larger numbers of affluent professional and middle-class families were made by specialist furniture makers, usually cabinetmakers. Designs were often specific to each individual commission, so not generally produced in large numbers, but craftsmen did use pattern books, so common types emerged, and cabinetmakers could develop specific styles or types that were considered to be their signature pieces. And, of course, in a city like Copenhagen in the 16th, 17th, 18th or 19th century people would have been aware of what was fashionable or not.

In the late 19th century poor working families rented one or two rooms and there was little security either for work or housing. This painting by Erik Henningsen from 1892, now in Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen, shows a family being evicted. Their main pieces of furniture appear to be a large trunk and a single bed. There are just two chairs - one of the type known in England as a balloon back, here with what looks like a woven cane seat and a second chair with two cross pieces for the back and where the seat, presumably either upholstered or with cane, has been replaced by two roughly-cut planks that have been nailed across.

 
 

But in Copenhagen, in particular, but also in other large towns in Denmark, life for the majority of people was changing rapidly by the late 19th century and certainly through the early decades of the 20th century. The population was increasing fast, people were moving in greater and greater numbers into the towns for work that was increasingly in industry or in retail or trade - rather than in agriculture or fishing - and more and better-furnished apartments were increasingly common even for ordinary or less wealthy families.

Chairs had to be produced in much larger numbers. There was less demand for expensive furniture but even cheaper furniture, even in the early stages of work shops moving towards mass production, was seen to be better if it was made with good timber and with good serviceable construction.

Cabinetmakers struggled, like many professions and trades, through the downturn in the economy in the years of the economic depression in the 1920s, so they began to hold annual shows in Copenhagen - initially to display and sell their work but they realised that they had to sell not just to the wealthy families but to as many people as possible.

Those cabinetmakers' annual exhibitions began in 1927 and continued through until 1966 so for almost the whole of what is now seen as the classic period of early modern Danish design.

The furniture shown in the first year was basically furniture that could have been from almost any of the previous two or three decades and the main room display from 1928 was variations on 18th-century designs, presumably in part to show off skills in using expensive timbers for inlay and so on, so the chairs had fancy cabriole legs and ornate woven or tapestry covers in silk.

But by 1929 there was a perceptible change and some of the furniture, and particularly chairs, were simpler and more functional even if not as yet exactly utilitarian.

By 1930 the annual exhibition included a small fully-furnished apartment and the cabinetmakers began a strong working relationship with architects to produce well made chairs (and other furniture of course) for what we would now recognise as a style of living that was not that different from the way we live today 90 years later. That partnership with architects seems now, with hindsight, crucial.

That apartment in the cabinetmakers' exhibition, with one bedroom, was designed by Hans Hansen and Vigo Sten Møller, and had two low or easy chairs with arms and three dining chairs in the living room but the table could be moved up to a sofa with space for three more people to provide more seating and there were two chairs in the bedroom that could also be moved in to the main room be used at the dining table so, even in a small apartment, it was possible to have eight people sitting down together for a meal.

the apartment by Hans Hansen and Vigo Sten Møller
for the cabinetmakers' exhibition in 1930

And if you have been lucky enough to be invited to a Danish family meal then they are long affairs … a big lunch can extend on through the afternoon and evening and when the food and conversation is good then people stay at the table. Chairs have to be comfortable.

So that is one important clue to why chairs were and are important in Danish homes. Eating together as a family and as an extended family with friends was and still is an important part of Danish life and that, in part, explains why chair design and chair production may be more important than in many other countries.

That very strong social element is combined with the relative wealth of the country and a very strong tradition for carefully considered design and making …. quality of design along with quality of materials and skill in manufacture are very much at the core of Danish design and production - and that helps to explain why chair design is not only important but is so good in Denmark. 

 
 

That's a fairly obvious combination of factors … a long, well-established tradition of making good, well-made furniture; well established cabinet making skills - through guilds and the training of apprentices to pass on those skills - with a general education system that sees training in design - or at least the appreciation of good design - as important, with good well-made homes for most people - you don't buy a good chair if you have nowhere to put it - and a population that appreciates the importance of investing in good well-made furniture, when you can. That's all it needs to replicate the success of the Danish furniture industry. Simple.

 

October from Nikari

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This simple but elegant and well-made chair from the Finnish company Nikari Oy was designed by Samuli Naamanka and is one of 12 different works by different designers, each piece named after a month of the year, that together form a series called Designs for Nature.

This type of wooden chair, without arms and without upholstery, has a long history in Nordic design and can be found in robust vernacular pieces from the 19th century onwards.

It is a strong and practical form and can be found in commercial production - often used for schools or cafes - in part because they are robust and in part because, usually, these chairs can be stacked for storing - but the form also has an important lineage in the work of major designers, perhaps more often associated with more expensive or what may initially appear to be more 'sophisticated' designs.

It is the apparent simplicity of the design that provides the real design challenge … either to produce a piece that is strong but is relatively cheap to manufacture or to produce a piece that is made in more expensive wood but has a simple and clean elegance … often, as here, with a deceptive simplicity. It is a design challenge because there is nowhere for the craftsman or the designer to hide poor workmanship.

Generally, in these chairs the legs are square, or at most slightly tapered, and have to be thick enough and the joints of the frame strong enough to dispense with stretchers. Seats are at most gently curved down in the centre to provide more comfort and back rests are a simple curve of wood that is either set, as here, between the back uprights or faced and pegged across the front of the uprights.

The October Chair is in ash and the grain and the nature of that timber means that the legs can be cut with a thinner section and with finer joints than would be possible in oak or deal or pine.

 

Light simple Danish chairs in oak - like the church chair designed by Kaare Klint in 1936 or The People's Chair designed by Børge Mogensen in 1947 - tend to have woven seats but do have the simple back in thin wood but the chair for schools designed by the Copenhagen City Architect's Office in the 1930s had plain wooden seats and a simple curved backrest set between the back uprights although, for additional strength, those chairs had side stretchers running back from the front legs to the back legs.

Cecilie Manz showed a chair of this form - the Sølvgade Chair - at Mindcraft16 and the Anders Petersen Gallery in Copenhagen are showing a chair by Tomoyuki Matsuoka for which they are the only European agent.

Nikari

Fredericia

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Barbry Stool by Aurelien Barbry

 

The Danish furniture company Fredericia have moved from Frederiksborggade in Copenhagen to an extensive and impressive new space in Løvstræde where they are on the upper floors of the recently restored old post office building. There are large, well-lit spaces for displaying the furniture and, from the upper level, amazing views over the roof scape of the old city.

For 3daysofdesign Fredericia showed new additions to their collection that were set out in a striking series of canvas domes and they also showed new textiles from Kvadrat, designed by Raf Simmons, that they are using for upholstery on some of their furniture.

  • Haiku Low Sofa by Gamfratesi

  • Sine Lounge Chair by Space

  • Verve Sledge by Geckler Michels

 

There is a small area with a display of historic drawings and old photographs that trace back Fredericia's collaboration with some of the major designers of the 20th century since the company was founded in 1911. Fredericia still manufacture the famous leather sofa - Model 2213 - that was designed by Børge Mogensen in 1962 as well as his Spanish Chair designed in 1958 and the Søborg series of chairs by Mogensen from 1950.

Furniture designed by other major designers from the classic period of Danish design in the 1950s and 1960s include chairs by Hans Wegner and works by Nanna Ditzel - including the Trinidad Series - but Fredericia have also commissioned work from some of the best designers of the late 20th century and from young designers working now including the Kile sofa by Jasper Morrison, the Stingray Series from Thomas Pedersen, the Haiku Series by GamFratesi and the Pato Collection by Hee Welling and Gudmundur Ludvik.

Their collection of furniture is renowned for its quality but Fredericia is also noted for their outstanding use of colour and for the tailored look of their upholstery that uses strong colour combinations and fabrics with contrasting textures to emphasise the shape and form of chairs and sofas.

Fredericia

Model 2213 designed by Børge Mogensen in 1962

Kile Sofa by Jasper Morrison

Haiku in the high model from 2012 and low back version from 2015 by GamFratesi

Spine daybed by Space of Copenhagen 2016

Stingray Series designed by Thomas Pedersen

Really at Kvadrat

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Sometimes you come across a design or a product that had not been on the radar - but it stops you in your tracks. It's like driving along a road and suddenly there is an amazing view and you can’t help yourself and just go wow.

Well it was a bit like that on seeing Really at Kvadrat at Klubiensvej in Nordhavn on Thursday.

In part, this was because I had seen nothing on the internet about Really so, for once, this was the impact of something that appeared to be very new and came out of the blue ........ or maybe it just shows that I’m not going through the design magazines with enough care or attention because Really was shown in Milan.

Probably the best way to start is to quote the introduction in a catalogue from Really:

“Responding to the urgent global issue of waste, Really upcycles textiles to create materials that challenge the design and architectural industries to rethink their use of resources and to design their products with a circular economy in mind.”

 

The result is new Acoustic Textile Felt and Solid Textile Board - a new building board. These are made from end-of-life textiles - for instance, worn-out bedding from large laundry companies - and the process does not use toxic chemicals or water or dyes. At the end of their own useful life the felt and boards can be “re-granulated” to feed the start of a new product so hence that concept of circular design.

Solid Boards come in different gauges and can be cut and put together for furniture with many of the same techniques as plywood. Thicker boards even have the same impression of layers as plywood with white cotton used for the core layer and coloured outer layers in Cotton White, Cotton Blue, Wool Slate and Wool Natural and that can be more obvious when several thinner layers are combined to form a heavier or thicker gauge of  board ... for instance for table tops. 

Boards can be cut, drilled or milled, sanded and planed, laser cut and glued. Surface treatments are also similar to the finishes for plywood with lacquer, oil or wax.

In the display at Kvadrat, a number of bold benches and tables designed by Max Lamb were shown along with a mood board collection of samples and ideas that, in a good way, reminded me of lino cutting … not the prints but the tangible qualities of the linoleum itself with all the various options you have for depth and sharpness of cut that reveal the layers down from the smooth matt surface and also because the boards themselves have some of that warmth and softness of colour that is a distinct characteristic of simple linoleum.

reallycph.com

 
 

Chair by Tomoyuki Matsuoka

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sometimes, when you are shown how the magic trick works, the magic seems more and not less amazing

 

Sølvgade Chair by Cecilie Manz - shown at Mindcraft16

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The Sølvgade Chair by Cecilie Manz - when seen alongside the other works in the Mindcraft16 exhibition - appears to be the most conventional piece because it is restrained, rather self-contained and certainly does not draw attention to itself. In contrast, many of the other pieces are deliberately flamboyant and deliberately controversial to push conventions and to challenge the visitor. 

However, the design of the chair goes in the other direction. By taking the design of a chair back to basic principles it raises interesting and important questions about how designers and manufacturers should approach the production of a new chair.

Why is that important? Well, a chair is perhaps the staple piece of furniture and usually has a major place or even an iconic place in the catalogues of the major Danish design companies. New chairs are launched at regular intervals and old designs are revived as a matter of pride in a well-known back catalogue. Most design buffs can reel off a list of classic chairs but would find it more difficult to name more than a couple of classic table designs or a couple of sofas.

What is also important with the Sølvgade Chair is that the form of the chair is not looking back to the work of the cabinet maker's working with Hans Wegner or Finn Juhl, in the classic period of Danish design from the 1950s and 1960s, so quite curved and sculpted or shaped in form but is more closely related to designs from Børge Mogensen and through him back to his master, the pre-war designer and teacher Kaare Klint. The stripped-back but elegant simplicity of the Sølvgade Chair is different from but close in its structural details to the Chair 122 from 1952 by Mogensen or his design for the Haarby Chair for FDB - the Coop - and produced by CM Madsen.

 

the Haarby Chair and Haarby Table by Børge Mogensen made by C M Madsen of Haarby for FDB

 
 

Rather than square-cut legs, most wood-framed dining chairs have turned and shaped legs - often made as thin as possible while leaving enough wood at the top of the legs to be able to cut relatively strong mortice-and-tenon joints, with or without pegs, to hold together the frame of the seat. As the legs are made thinner then usually strength is provided by cross rails below the seat to link together the legs into what is hoped to be a light and elegant framework. 

Similarly, the strongest arrangement for the legs is for them to be vertical and for the back legs to continue up in single straight pieces of wood to support the back rest. If the back legs are splayed backwards to make the chair more stable or simply to make the profile more elegant then the angle of the change of angle at the level of the seat is even weaker. Even where the uprights are vertical there is a problem where the back rest applied directly against or between these uprights because it would be at an uncomfortable angle for the person sitting in the chair … possibly OK for a desk chair or a school chair but certainly not good for someone wanting to feel comfortable and relaxed at a dining table.

Cecilie Manz resolves this problem by shaping back the two uprights on the front or seat side and facing a thin shaped back rest across them at that angle.

On the Sølvgade Chair there are no cross rails at the front or on the sides and although there is a back rail, just below the back of the seat, it actually replaces a back piece for the frame of the seat which is omitted … a detail that makes the chair when seen from the back much less solid or cumbersome. The seat itself is a thin shaped piece of wood dropped into rebates in the seat frame. The back of the seat itself is rounded off and although the front edge of the chair is set square, the front of the seat itself has rounded corners and the front edge of the rebate is set almost as far forward as possible to create what comes closest in the chair to a decorative detail … decorative only in that it is not structurally rational.

 
 
 

The chair is made in Oregon Pine … or rather Douglas Fir although even that is a misnomer as the tree is not a true fir. It came originally from the west coast of the USA, where it grows tall and straight and has a relatively high and relatively narrow crown and the tall straight trunk has few if any side branches. That is important because there are not as many knots or whorls in the grain that are found where branches have grown but been broken away or trimmed off when the tree was felled.  

Because of the natural height and its straight growth, the timber has been used for construction work including for timber piles and for the masts of ships. A number of Danish architects in the 1960s used the pine for cladding walls and ceilings … almost-certainly the house built for Børge Morgensen in Soløsevej in Gentofte has ceilings in Oregon Pine.

The wood has a straight but strong and pronounced dark grain and an orange colour that can be seen clearly in the Sølvgade Chair. The colour has made it less popular over the last few decades than paler timbers like ash or oak. Cecilie Manz studied in Finland after graduating from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Design, and of course the use of thin-cut sheets of wood, most often used for making plywood, have been used there for furniture much more than in Denmark.

Mindcraft16 continues at Designmuseum Danmark in Copenhagen until 8th January 2017

Cecilie Manz