The Danish Chair

The story of mid-century Danish design

The chair is the closest thing to a human being. You can give it a personal expression.
Hans J. Wegner
02:20
An introduction to

Danish Modern

It is impossible to discuss mid-century Danish chair design without talking about Danish Modern – a broad style of furniture, textiles, lighting and other housewares which gained international fame in the 1950s and 1960s. Most of them are admired to this day.

Danish Modern was born of the urge to create more functional and usable objects. While partly influenced by the Bauhaus and other art movements of the 1920s, Danish modernists steered away from the machine aesthetic and from the search for a 'perfect' design; instead, they aimed for an 'appropriate' design, focusing on form, use and materials.

45 Chair, 1945
A quick look at

Finn Juhl

Together with Hans J. Wegner, Juhl was one of the first Danish designers to achieve international fame in the 1950s. He distanced himself from the highly mathematical approach of Kaare Klint, and instead designed furniture that was playful, expressive and organic-looking, often likened to pieces of sculpture.

Juhl was a Copenhagen fellow, international, always knowing what was going on everywhere more or less as it was happening. While still young he was a man of the world. We were more like carpenters.
Hans J. Wegner
01:10
An introduction to

Hans J. Wegner

The son of a master cobbler, Wegner was exposed to the skilful craft of his father from the early years. Having discovered a love for wood, Wegner chose a cabinetmaker’s profession. His chairs achieved worldwide fame thanks to Wegner's organic understanding of form and his genuine interest in the interaction between products and users - both qualities of organic functionalism.

His chair design process was rapid and well defined. To test ideas and learn about potential production challenges, Wegner used to create multiple 1:5 scale models of a chair. Several of these have actually been stolen at exhibitions.

Panton Chair, 1960
A quick look at

Verner Panton

Panton took a more contemporary approach to interior design. By treating an entire room as a collection of abstract sculptural shapes, he expanded on other designers’ preoccupation with organic form. Chairs were turned into boxes on the floor or curves in a wall, and everything was saturated with colour, especially bold red. All this blended nicely into his psychedelic interiors.

You sit more comfortably on a colour that you like.
Verner Panton
GJ Chair, 1963
A quick look at

Grete Jalk

Inspired by the Finnish designer Alvar Aalto and the Americans Charles and Ray Eames, Grete Jalk experimented a lot with plywood. Her laminated chair (1963), with almost impossible-looking folds of bent plywood, is regarded as her best-known work. Due to the complexity of the chair's design, only 300 models were originally manufactured, with only a few copies still existing today.

01:18
An introduction to

Arne Jacobsen

Throughout his life, Jacobsen was constantly inspired by the natural world. As a child, he derived his creativity from nature around him and painted many watercolour landscapes and plants. As an adult, he became a skilled gardener and designed gardens and indoor green spaces for many of his buildings.

Although he viewed himself primarily as an architect, Jacobsen created all interior details and furnishings in his buildings. Apart from the famous example of the SAS Royal Hotel, he also designed the St Catherine's College campus in Oxford, where he even chose the species of fish for the ornamental ponds.

One cannot create happiness with beautiful objects, but one can spoil quite a lot with bad ones.
Finn Juhl