Two-seat sofa by Kaare Klint 1929

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This sofa was designed for the Danish Pavilion at the Exposición Internacional de Barcelona that opened on 15 May 1929 and continued until 15 January 1930.

The frame is in Cuban Mahogany and the sofa is upholstered with goatskin leather covers for the loose cushions and with the frame itself covered with leather held along the bottom edge by closely-spaced, round-headed, brass fixing tacks used as a decorative feature.

In the l1920s and in the 1930s, Klint designed a number of sofas and most with legs between the different sections …. so the two-seat sofas have six legs and the three-seat sofas eight legs and most with cross bracing forming a cross below the seats. Here, in the two-seat sofa, there are stretchers set back from the front line of the front legs allowing people to tuck their feet back without touching the stretcher as they are sitting in the sofa or when they are standing up.

Stretchers are chamfered on the under edge partly to reduce the apparent thickness but also to strengthen the vulnerable edge which is more likely to splinter or dent if it is left as a sharp angle. The underside of lower frame are also shaped up inside the housing with the legs and the line of brass tacks follows and emphasises this line.

The sofa has thin upholstered end pieces as arm rests that ramp up at the back to the higher bank panel and thin loose cushions at each side mirror this shape. There are double cushions on the seat, the top cushions with down for comfort. There are also soft loose cushions for the back rest.

The pavilion itself was designed by Tyge Hvass and took as a starting point Danish vernacular architecture of the 17th or 18th century. The exterior was painted red and the simple building had a pitched roof covered with clay pantiles.

Lighting for the pavilion was from Louis Poulsen and was designed by Poul Henningsen.

two-seater sofa 1929
designed by Kaare Klint (1888-1954)
made by the cabinetmaker Rud. Rasmussen
identified in the catalogue of the Design Museum as sofa model 4035

Cuban mahogany with goatskin leather and round-headed brass fixing tacks.

height: 86 cm (34 inches)
width: 137 cm (54 inches)
depth: 74 cm (29 inches)

 

the Danish Pavilion at the Exposición Internacional de Barcelona in 1929

the German Pavilion in Barcelona designed by Mies van der Rohe

a three-seat sofa without loose cushions and with the cross bracing below
this is Model no. 4118 designed for the office of the Prime Minister Thorvald Stauning
Klint designed a two-seat version of this for the Ny Carlsberg Foundation in 1930 with the same shape of end but with leather upholstered cushions closely buttoned so
an interesting amalgamation of the 4118 and the Barcelona two-seat sofa

desk and cabinet by Kaare Klint (1933)

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The desk and separate three-drawer cabinet were designed by Kaare Klint and made by the cabinetmaker Rud. Rasmussen. Together with a bookcase and the sectional sofa they were shown at the Cabinetmakers' Exhibition in Copenhagen in 1933.

The pieces are in mahogany with ebony as a contrast for the base of the cabinet and for the foot of the legs of the desk. The distinct feature of the desk is the legs with an L-shape cross section … a form used by Klint in several designs and a feature of the construction used by Klint in his designs for the display cabinets for the Design Museum itself. This makes the uprights lighter but stronger than a single piece of squared timber particularly for pieces of any length.

This is early functional design at its best: the top drawer of the cabinet was fitted with a typewriter that swung out on a mechanism that brought it up to the level of the desk top; the middle drawer was designed for pens and inks and the lowest drawer was for files and papers held vertically - so a filing cabinet. Because the separate cabinet could be placed on either side of the desk, this design was more flexible than a traditional pedestal desk with fixed drawers on one side or the other or on both sides for a larger desk.

The desk and cabinet were never produced commercially so are unique.

designed by Kaare Klint (1888-1954)
made by the cabinetmaker Rud. Rasmussen
exhibited at the Cabinetmakers' Autumn Exhibition in 1933

mahogany and ebony

desk
height: 75cm
width: 97cm
depth: 68.5cm

3-drawer cabinet
height:75cm
width: 48cm
depth: 68.5cm

photographs taken at Designmuseum Danmark in Copenhagen

 

Snedkernes Efterårsudstilling / The Cabinetmakers' Autumn Exhibition 2019

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Re-think / Re-use / Re-duce

 

The Cabinetmakers' Autumn Exhibition has just opened in the Golden Gallery at the Danish Architecture Center in Copenhagen.

photographs and basic information about the works.

  

the exhibition opened on 8 November 2019 and continues until 3 May 2020
Danish Architecture Center, Bryghuspladsen 10, 1473 Copenhagen
S.E. Snedkernes Efterårsudstilling 2019

 

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 give 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 an 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 with the seat upholstered in the eco-labelled wool Hallingdal from Kvadrat or with aniline leather
FSC-certified wood

Soft Chair

by the Danish designer Thomas Bentzen
Ash
FSC-certified wood

 

skud på stammen at Design Werck

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Barndommens Land designed by Aske Foersom and made by Sara Ruff
En Gyngestol designed by Søren Nissen and made by Kasper Wium Kristiansen and Abia Manzanares
Bord designed by Tine Mouritsen and made by Gunver Lindeskov Søgaard

This week is the last opportunity to see the exhibition at Design Werck in Copenhagen of furniture made by students who are about to graduate as cabinetmakers. The students from next> in Copenhagen worked in partnership with designers and the furniture is made from lime wood from trees felled at the Rødovre City Hall when the main entrance courtyard was replanted.

SKUD PÅ STAMMEN continues at Design Werck until Sunday 10 March 2019
note: Design Werck does not open on Monday or Tuesday

Design Werck

Piqué by Hannes Stephensen

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It's always interesting to see how a design evolved …  if possible to see how a designer tried and then rejected certain options to reach the final form for a design. It's part of that same process when you see designers, having reached one stage, then pick up an idea and take it on to develop a variation.

For the Cabinetmakers' Autumn Exhibition in 2017 - when the theme was Side by Side Out Side - Hannes Stephensen designed a pair of seats that were set on a hefty base like a low bench. With the title Flette Fingre, these seats had a distinct form with an L shape of tapered or wedge-shaped  forming a seat and a backrest - a shape, as the name indicates, like interlocking your finger tips and holding your palms at right angles to each other - and this seat unit was held on a complicated but almost completely hidden steel pivot so the chairs, although they were fixed on a common base, could be twisted round so people could face each other to talk or tuern away from each other.

That pair of seats was made by Kristian Frandsen and this year the same partnership has taken the same form of chair but made slightly smaller and they have developed the design and taken it on to a next stage by separating the chairs and setting each on its own cross-shaped base in wood and a short column that supports the metal pivot and the seat to make a stand-alone chair. With the title Piqué, the idea of a pair of chairs has been kept but one chair is in Oregon Pine and one in ash. In 2017, both the chairs were in oak.

Piqué
MONO catalogue  number 25
designed by: Hannes Stephensen
produced by: Snedkersind v/Kristian Frandsen

Et stk. i ask, et stk. i oregonpine / One in ash, one in oregon pine
height: 80 
width: 50
depth: 50 cm

 

Flette Fingre designed by Hannes Stephensen and made by Kristian Frandsen
shown at the Cabinetmakers’ Autumn Exhibition in 2017 at Designmuseum Danmark

 

note:

Side by Side was for furniture outside … the idea of that theme for the Cabinetmakers’ Exhibition was to design furniture that encouraged people to sit and talk. The exhibition was in the great inner courtyard of Designmuseum Danmark in Copenhagen and, as part of the exhibition, and developing that idea of conversation, the museum showed a number of filmed interviews with the designers and the cabinetmakers. The conversation between Hannes Stephensen and Kristian Frandsen was a revelation because it showed how their common enthusiasm and their obvious and very real passion for craftsmanship in wood drove forward the project.

The design museum regularly uses films and video … both historic and contemporary … to illuminate aspects of the collection or the works of specific designers … the current show of design since 2000 in Dansk Design Nu is a particularly good example. It is to be hoped that these will be shown more widely if the museum can establish something comparable to the Louisiana Channel, the on-line site by Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.

more from MONO - O-X and Sunrise by Lise and Hans Isbrand

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Lise and Hans Isbrand designed two pieces for MONO - the Cabinetmakers’ Autumn Exhibition at Thorvaldsens Museum … a low wide chair called Sunrise  with shaped and curved  seat and back rest in laminated wood supported on an elegant frame in ash and a low table with a circular wood top supported on a steel frame, that for fairly obvious reasons, has the title O-X.

On the first day after the exhibition opened, there was a chance to meet Lise and Hans Isbrand and we talked about their work. They discussed the construction of the chair and were kind enough and patient enough to turn the chair over and turn it around so I could see how the frame is constructed and take photographs.

It struck me that the chair and table are different in character and form but they explore similar and related ideas about construction ... they explore how you construct as thin and as light a support as possible … with one in wood and one in steel.

Sunrise - the chair - has unusual and distinct features in it's design but is clearly in a long Danish tradition of cabinetmaking for furniture made from wood.

The seat and the back of the chair are broad oval shapes in thin laminated wood or plywood that are curved in just a single plane and that is a form of chair that goes back to the 1950s - to shell chairs designed by Hans Wegner - but where chairs by Wegner either had a bold support that was also in laminated wood or had a robust frame in wood, often oak, here, in the Isbrand chair, the seat and back are supported on a complex frame that exploits the qualities of the ash that has been used for legs and cross members that are barely thicker than a dowel and form a complicated and elegant scaffold.

O-X, the low table, also explores and experiments with the intrinsic characteristics of the materials … a large but thin disc in wood for the top is supported on a bent steel frame.

The top is about 20mm thick but the edge, rather than being cut square, has a very precise and deep chamfer that makes the top, from a slight distance, look more like a disc of sheet metal.

For the frame that supports the top, the design exploits the qualities of steel that is not just strong in itself but when bent into sharper curves than are possible with steam-bent wood it becomes even stronger as a support so it can either take a heavier weight or, as here, the parts of the supporting frame can be reduced in thickness.

If the chair is firmly within the Danish cabinetmaking tradition … a tradition of making furniture in beautiful wood, unadorned, in a sharp and precise form of construction executed with real and very obvious skill … the table is different.

It has a stripped back or pared down simplicity that reflects a specifically Danish form of minimalism. I suggested to Hans Isbrand that the table, in its style,  looks back to the 1960s and was firmly put in my place. However, the use of metal for furniture, that actually goes back to the 1930s in Denmark, was strongest in Danish furniture in the 1960s but somehow has never really competed in popular taste with furniture in wood. 

Perhaps, this was because, without deposits of iron or coal, there was little steel production in Denmark or perhaps simply because making good furniture in wood was so well established in Denmark that wood was and still is what Danish buyers choose to buy.

There are clearly great Danish pieces from the classical period of modern design that use metal - so the Super Elipse table by Piet Hein from 1964 or the chairs and tables with steel frames by Poul Kjærholm through the 1950s and 1960s - but even now there is much less furniture in glass and steel in a Danish furniture store than you would expect to see in Germany or France or Italy.

ISBRAND DESIGN

Sunrise by Lise and Hans Isbrand - MONO catalogue 26

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The large oval-shaped seat and the backrest of the chair are in laminated wood or plywood that are curved in just one plane and rest lightly on a thin and elegant framework or scaffold in ash.

Ash has a straight and regular grain and this is exploited in the construction with the parts of the frame turned and reduced to a small cross section so the pieces are barely more than the thickness of a dowel.

For a framed chair in wood the simple and common form has a square or circular frame that supports the seat with, normally, two legs at the front, often but not always housed into the underside of the frame, and with two legs at the back that continue above the level of the frame to support a piece of timber for a back rest that is set either vertical or at a slight angle for more comfort and is either between the upper parts of the back legs or fixed across the front of the two uprights. To keep the legs in place the next stage is to add stretchers - lengths of timber between the legs to stop them splaying out and if stretchers are added then the timber of the legs can be thinner.

It doesn't really have to be spelt out like that here except that it shows just how many of those conventions the Isbrands play with and subvert to create such an elegant framework of wood to support the seat and the backrest of their chair.

The other basic elements of construction that should be pointed out is that horizontal and vertical parts of a chair are usually fixed together with mortice and tenon joints with the mortice or slot in the main and usually thicker timber and the tenon or tongue that is fixed into the mortice is usually on the end of the thinner secondary timber. The classic ways to stop the tenon pulling out is either to drill a hole through the side of the mortice and tenon and drive through a peg to hold the two pieces together or to cut a slot across the end of the tenon and, when the timber is in place - with the tenon in the mortice - then a wedge is driven into the end to expand the tenon and stop it pulling out. The strength of the joint is greater the more precisely it is cut and often it is the shoulder, at the point where the timber is reduced in size at the start of the tenon, that has to be well cut, to keep the pieces at the right angle,

In Sunrise the tenons are rounded off at the top and bottom to form an extended oval shape and there are two wedges in dark wood to keep the tenon from pulling out so this becomes a strong decorative feature of the chair frame. The tenons do not have a pronounced shoulder but there are hollow curves back from the joint itself to make the transition from the tenon to the full thickness of the timber.

The frame is complicated. Perhaps the most conventional part is the front frame with two vertical legs with two stretchers - one just below the top of the legs and a second stretcher just below that.

The two back legs are set out at a pronounced angle and do not support the back rest directly but are housed into short verticals that support the back rest and are rather like props. The two vertical supports for the backrest do not run down to the ground but are housed into long raking struts that run from the top stretcher between the front legs angled down and out to the back legs.

The laminated seat rests at the front on short collars or spacing pieces housed into the top of the upper stretcher and the back of the seat is supported on short brackets out from the lower part of the struts that support the back rest.

Again, as with the front of the seat, there are short spacers between the struts and the curved back rest.

To stop the back legs moving outwards there are low stretchers, just above the ground, between the front and the back legs.

There are very nice details to the frame like the deep cups shaped out of the tops of the legs.

Rather than having upholstery or a cushion for the seat there is a simple round hole cut through the laminated wood that is closed with halyard taken from side to side, woven by threading the rope down through small holes drilled around the opening.

Sunrise
MONO catalogue number 26
designed by: Lise and Hans Isbrand
produced by: MoreWood Møbelsnedkeri ApS

asketræ / ash
height: 75
width: 80
depth: 80 cm

 

O-X by Lise and Hans Isbrand - MONO catalogue 38

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This is a simple circular top on four short steel legs but those legs are not fixed into the underside of the top and are not part of a frame on cross struts immediately under the top but are set outside the rim with the top of the legs bent in a relatively sharp curve inwards and inserted into hole in the rim where they are held in place by a grub screw from below.

At the floor, the legs are linked by cross piece to the leg diagonally opposite. These X pieces might have met at the centre but they are arched upwards but each with a different curve so one crosses over the other.

The edge of the top could have been cut to form a simple flat face or could have been given a rounded profile but is undercut with a sharp chamfer. Wood cannot be cut to a thin sharp angle but here the vertical at the top edge of the chamfer is as thin as possible and that makes the top, for its size, very elegant.

This chamfer could have been stopped square or angled off but is swept down and then back up to form a vertical where the top of the leg goes into the top of the table. They are held in place by small grub screws.

A large but elegant and deceptively simple but sophisticated table.

 

O-X
MONO catalogue number 38
designed by: Lise and Hans Isbrand
produced by: Gate95 ApS


rustfrit stål, farvelakeret plade / stainless steel, painted tabletop
height: 40 
diameter: 90 cm

 

Introvert position - chair designed by Andreas Lund

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A compact and robust chair that has an unusual form of construction and proves, as always, that although a design may appear to be simple, the best simple - as here - takes a lot of work to get right.

It has a relatively thick seat in solid wood - so not with a frame - but the edge is undercut with a deep chamfer that disguises that thickness and also creates a sharp crisp line to the front edge when you see the chair in profile.

The seat also has a complex shape that is a semicircle for the back half but combined with an elongated half of a hexagon to the front.

The form of chair construction is also difficult to describe:

The seat is supported on an X with two cross pieces that are halved one over the other. These cross timbers are higher than they are wide and are cut away at the centre so that the solid seat drops down into the cross rather than sitting on top of it.

Each of these cross bars is housed directly into the turned legs … a shorter front leg at one end of the cross piece, with the mortice of the housing just below the top of the leg so that  it stands just proud of the horizontal cross piece, and a back leg at the other end with the housing for the cross bar at the centre of the leg.

That X - of the cross shape underneath the seat - is not regular with the crossing point closer to the back of the chair than to the front so, with unequal arms, the back legs are closer together than the front legs.

A kidney shaped back rest, in thin but solid wood, is gently curved and appears to be in two parts with the grain arranged symmetrically about a central horizontal axis. It is fixed an angle for comfort by cutting a flat face at the face of the upper part of the back legs.

The legs are set vertically, rather than being splayed outwards at the ground to make the chair more stable. Generally vertical legs indicate a simpler and more straightforward chair - a feature associated with country chairs made in a local workshop - and legs that are set an angle that require more precise and more complicated mortice and tenon joints are used to indicate that a chair is more sophisticated.

So one definition of a country chair is that it made in the workshop in a traditional way … barely needing thought and certainly not needing design but each slightly varying from the next as the carpenter responds to differences in each piece of wood. Although Introvert position might look like a simple country chair, it actually has carefully-determined and, of course, beautifully made with considerable precision.

 

Introvert position
MONO catalogue number 1
designed by: Andreas Lund
produced by: Toke Overgaard

asketræ / ash
height: 77 
width: 38 
depth: 42 cm

 

En stol / A chair - designed by Johannes Foersom & Peter Hiort-Lorenzen

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This is a deceptively simple but very clever design - like a child's drawing of a chair or a cartoon drawing of what a chair should be like - a chair that should be in a Walt Disney cartoon like the Sorcerer's Apprentice - but beautifully realised in wood.

With rounded corners and rounded edges it's the very opposite of thin and elegant so it is somehow comforting and it brings out the soft, warm and almost gentle, qualities of good oak in a way that is found too rarely in modern furniture.

The seat is solid and not round but squarish with strongly-rounded corners and the edge of the seat is rounded off with the most pronounced rounding on the top edge rather than it being a symmetrical moulding or being undercut. The four legs are robust and turned - so round rather than square in section - and tapered - so wider at the top and narrower at the ground -  and the foot is not cut square or flat but also has an obvious rounding.

The legs are set directly into the underside of the seat but into blind mortices * and they are angled outwards slightly for stability. Because the legs are relatively thick, stretchers that are necessary in lighter and thinner chairs to stop the legs splaying out or twisting, can be omitted here.

The back rest is substantial and sharply curved - in the horizontal plane - embracing the back of the sitter but is not in plywood but is cut from oak and again is given a softer, smooth shape with rounded corners and rounded edges. It is supported on four robust flat splats - rather than turned spindles - and again the edges are smoothed round and, like the legs, these splats are held in place with tenons in blind mortices so no distractions from anything as complicated as a peg or a wedge.

Maybe it sounds silly to say this but it seems to be a deliberately unpretentious and an amazingly open and friendly chair. To use a phrase normally associated with candles - this is hyggelig.

 

 

En stol / A chair
MONO catalogue number 24
designed by: Johannes Foersom & Peter Hiort-Lorenzen
produced by: Kvist Industries A/S

egetræ / oak

height: 73
width: 55
depth: 52 cm

 

 

 note:

* In simple furniture, particularly in what is often called country furniture, the most common way to fix turned legs to a solid seat is to cut a round tenon at the top of the leg and, with a hole completely through the seat as a mortice, the tenon is held in place by cutting a slot down through the tenon and once the leg is in place, the tenon is expanded by driving in a wedge from the top. The strength of the leg depends on the precise and sharp cutting of the mortice and the shoulders of the tenon.

Chair by Anne Fabricius Møller at MONO - the Cabinetmakers' Autumn Exhibition

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Stol / Chair: Spøjs / Speys - MONO catalogue 3

What you notice first about this chair is the striking colour. It's not paint, because you an see the grain clearly but it's not stain … the chair is made in hardwood from a tree of the genus Peltogyne that is native to South and Central America and is known, for fairly obvious reasons, as Purpleheart because the heartwood turns a deep purple after the timber is cut.

But it's not just the colour that is unusual. The chair has an unusual form that was inspired by a work of the German artist Joseph Beuys that is now in the Neue Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart. It has a solid and relatively thick seat in wood with four turned or round legs that are slightly tapered - so thinner at the floor - and set just in from each corner but with a pronounced splay outwards at an emphatic angle to make the chair stable. These legs are fixed with a round tenon that goes through the seat and is held in place by a wedge driven down into the tenon from above.

So … so far fairly conventional.

But the chair is rectangular - much deeper than it is wide - with a back rest fixed across the narrow end … well a back rest if you sit astride the chair with your back against the rest or it is a single arm rest if you sit on the chair as if it is a bench.

This backrest / armrest is shaped rather like a staple or perhaps more like a squared-off and simplified version of the Greek letter Pi [ π ] with two uprights in turned wood and a straight but tapered cross bar linking the two at the top. This is dropped down into deeply-curved vertical grooves or channels on each long side of the seat - just in from the corners of the narrow end - and down and slightly inwards to cross over the legs - again running through rounded vertical channels but here cut in the legs - and stop short of the floor.

  

Spøjs / Speys
MONO Catalogue number 3
designed by: Anne Fabricius Møller
produced by: Toke Overgaard

Amaranttræ / also known as amaranth and purpleheart
height: 69 
width: 48
depth: 63 cm

more from MONO - 2Gether by Steen Dueholm Sehested

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At Thorvaldsens Museum in Copenhagen, in November and early December this year, there was a major exhibition of furniture by cabinetmakers. This was MONO - the Snedkernes Efterårsudstilling or Cabinetmakers’ Autumn Exhibition.

Generally, these pieces are not in production and many were designed specifically for the exhibition as it is an opportunity to try out ideas or use materials in unconventional ways that might not be obvious for a commercial manufacturer and designers find ways to highlight the skills of the cabinetmakers.

There are photographs here of the forty-one works shown along with basic information about the materials and dimensions but many of the pieces deserve longer individual posts.

2Gether by Steen Dueholm Sehested - MONO catalogue 13

Stools with an X-shaped frame have a well-established place in Danish design - the display of chairs at Designmuseum Danmark has nine stools of this form.

Most of these stools are folding stools with two frames that are pivoted or hinged at the centre and open out or fold out to form an X shape that supports a seat that is often canvas but can be leather or slats of wood from side to side across the top.

Here, in the stool designed by Steen Dueholm Sehested, there are two pieces - each a complex C shape, with the wood not a constant thickness but thicker at the centre and tapered or thinner towards the top and bottom and curved in both planes with slots cut into them so that they can be slotted or linked together. The C shapes cross over, curve back and cross over again so the base and the top on each side are part of the same piece to create an elegant and sculptural form.

Such complex curves could not be formed from single planks but are made up with finely-cut and joined blocks with the grain forming a part of the design.

The side pieces do not sit square on the floor but the bottom edge is champfered and cut to a sharp curve so the stool has just four points of contact with the floor.

 
 

2Gether
MONO catalogue number 13
designed and made by: Steen Dueholm Sehested

formspændt egetræ / moulded oak

height: 44
width: 38
depth: 26 cm

the danish chair - an international affair

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chairs in the collection of Designmuseum Danmark in the display that was designed by Boris Berlin and completed in 2016

Designmuseum Danmark have just published a book about chairs in the collection of the museum. Most of the chairs are from the 20th century and most are Danish although there are several chairs that were made in the 19th century -  an English Windsor Chair, an American Shaker Chair and Chinese chairs - that have been included because their forms of construction influenced Danish designs - and there are some modern international designs including chairs from England, Italy, Austria, Germany and the USA that help to set the Danish furniture in a wider context.

Essentially, the book takes the form of a catalogue with separate entries for nine stools and for 104 chairs with each on a double-page spread although for 31 of these the entries continue over to a second double-page that is used for historic photographs of the chair or for reproductions of working drawings.

Descriptions for each chair are succinct with most of the entries just over a hundred words although several are shorter and only two of the chairs have a text that goes into a second paragraph.

This certainly gives the book a clear and tight discipline.

Because this is not a continuous narrative text, it reads more like good museum labels and that is appropriate as the book accompanies a new gallery for the collection of chairs in the museum that was designed by Boris Berlin and completed in 2016.

With a relatively unusual format - the book is 150 mm wide and 270 mm high - the initial impression is that this is a handbook or even a pocket guide but at 32 mm thick and printed on heavy, good-quality paper this is a hefty book so would need a large pocket.

Although it is tall and narrow,  the double spread of facing pages gives a good and attractive square format. My only criticism of the book is that several interesting historic photographs and illustrations that have been placed across two pages are broken and distorted by a tight gutter.

Christian Holmsted Olesen, the author of the book, is a curator at the museum and wrote a seminal book on the work of the Danish furniture designer Hans Wegner - Wegner - just one good chair that was published as the main catalogue for an exhibition at Designmuseum Danmark in 2014. His introduction here is short but wide ranging and puts chair design in the much wider context of Danish design in the 20th century.

His aim is to show "how the so-called Golden Age of Danish furniture design was shaped by the study and refinement of historical furniture types," so the chairs in the book are not presented chronologically or by country but grouped by type … by form of construction. Types here are slightly different from the categorisation of form types in the museum gallery - presumably to be less specifically Danish and slightly more obvious for the foreign reader. The most straightforward change is that Shaker chairs, Chinese chairs and steam-bent chairs and the Klismos type of chair and Round Arm chairs - all types specified in the museum display - have been re-arranged in the book and those groups given new names. There is a new category for "Peasant chairs" - here including the influential Shaker chair from the collection and the well-known Church Chair by Kaare Klint and the People's Chair by Børge Mogensen - and the rest are divided between Bentwood chairs and Frame chairs.

In the book the categories for form or type are:

Folding stools and chairs
Low easy chairs
Peasant chairs
Bentwood chairs
Frame chairs
English chairs
Windsor chairs
Shell chairs
Cantilever chairs

Each section is prefaced by a list of the specific chairs of that type or of that form along with the useful outline sketches that were developed for information panels in the exhibition.

The book concludes with profiles of nine prominent and influential Danish designers …. Kaare Klint, Mogens Koch, Ole Wanscher, Børge Mogensen, Hans Wegner, Finn Juhl, Arne Jacobsen, Poul Kjærholm and Verner Panton.

Again, these are short accounts but authoritative - presumably for the general reader who wants more information for context - and finally there is a short but again useful list of recommended books for finding out more.

review of the museum chairs

The Danish Chair an international affair
by Christian Holmsted Olesen
Designmuseum Danmark with Strandberg Publishing 2018

layout and cover design: Rasmus Koch Studio

  

Designmuseum Danmark
Strandberg Publishing
Rasmus Koch Studio

Pictograms used in the introduction to the exhibition for a diagram of the types of chair and to represent the specific chairs in each type are used here as stylish end papers to the book and then as a quick-reference index at the start of the section on a type or form of chair … here Low easy chairs. Most chairs have a double page spread - so here the Windsor Chair by Ole Wanscher from 1942.

There are historic drawings for some chairs - here the Y or Wishbone Chair by Hans Wegner and historic photographs including the assembly hall of Kvinderegensen in Copenhagen - the university hall of residence for women with the chair designed by Rigmor Andersen in 1931.

The last section of the book has short accounts of the lives and the training and work of nine designers “who shaped their field.”