NINE
Great Dane
“It was not until about sixty years ago that the ultimate test of architectural genius became whether or not one could design a new kind of chair,” observed Peter Collins. He wrote that in 1963, and since then the number of architects designing chairs has multiplied. A recent example is the Dream Chair, the work of the prizewinning Japanese architect Tadao Ando, who had never designed a production chair before. I thought it would be interesting to see the chair—and to sit on it.
The Dream Chair is prominently displayed in the New York showroom of Carl Hansen & Søn, an established Danish furniture manufacturer. This lounge chair is made out of two large molded plywood shells, one for the seat and the other for the base. “It is possible with standard plywood to have minor double-curved planes, but it will for sure not be possible to bend the Ando chair with normal veneer,” explained Jesper Bruun, Hansen’s head of development, in an e-mail. He described the unconventional veneer of the Dream Chair as “wooden strings held together by glue.”
The chair is punctuated by three ovals: a padded headrest, a hole cut into the seat, and an identical hole in the base. The headrest is adjustable, a ratcheted feature commonly found in car seats but which strikes me as slightly out of place in a domestic chair. The base is cantilevered, so that when I sit down the chair flexes pleasantly. However, after a few minutes, the edge of the hole that is cut into the seat also cuts into my tail bone. It is a small but persistent irritant, like having a tiny stone in one’s shoe.
Looking around the Hansen showroom I recognize another plywood chair, an older model originally introduced more than fifty years ago. A low easy chair, it also consists of two pieces of curved plywood—a seat and back. They are supported on three legs: the two front legs made out of a single curved piece of laminated wood, and a hind leg doubling as a support for the backrest. Upholstered pads are attached to the plywood with brass fasteners that are plainly visible on the back and underside. My first impression is of an improbable tour de force: four pieces of wood, three legs, swooping curves. But when I sit down, I appreciate the roomy proportions and the comfortable shape. The sculptural “wings” that flare out dramatically on each side are actually convenient places to rest my hands—and to push against when I get up. The designer, Hans Wegner, had two decades of experience under his belt when he designed this chair, and it shows.
Wegner “helped change the course of design history in the 1950s and ’60s by sanding modernism’s sharp edges and giving aesthetes a comfortable seat,” read his New York Times obituary. In The Shape of Time, George Kubler pointed out that the impact of an artist depends not only on his personal abilities but also on the timing of his entrance onto the world stage. “Each man’s lifework is also a work in a series extending beyond him in either or both directions, depending upon his position in the track he occupies,” he wrote. Wegner’s position in the track of furniture history was particularly fortuitous: he was in the right place at exactly the right moment.
Shell Chair (Hans Wegner)
Hans J. Wegner was born in 1914 in Tønder, a small town in southern Denmark. He grew up in a craft tradition; his father was a master cobbler. At fourteen, young Hans was apprenticed to a local cabinetmaker—his qualifying project for the journeyman’s exam was a lady’s desk. When he was twenty-one, he went to Copenhagen to fulfill his military service. The city opened his eyes, and he realized that his knowledge of furniture design—as opposed to joinery—was limited. The following year, after completing a short cabinetmaker’s course he enrolled in the Cabinetmaker Day School. The Day School was an offshoot of the furniture school of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, whose founder and director was Kaare Klint, an architect and cabinetmaker who is sometimes called the godfather of modern Danish furniture.
Klint, who was born in 1888, considered the chair a functional necessity—a tool for sitting—but while he was no historicist, he did not reject the past. “All the problems are not new, and several of them have been solved before,” he instructed his students. His own designs were often updated versions of traditional chairs, especially English chairs, which he particularly admired. His oeuvre included a wing chair, a leather-covered club chair, a deep leather love seat, a chaise longue based on a steamer chair, and a rush-bottomed church chair of Shaker-like simplicity. Klint pioneered the teaching of anthropometrics—the study of body measurements—in chair design. He also emphasized the importance of details, which would become a leading characteristic of Danish furniture.
Klint’s lifetime output of chairs, tables, and cabinets amounted to only thirty pieces. There is a story that he was once visited by a friend, the Swedish architect Erik Gunnar Asplund, who described his current projects, and Klint responded that he was designing a chair. The two met again a couple of years later, and after Asplund described several new commissions he asked Klint what he was up to. “Well, I told you the last time we met,” he replied with what sounds like exasperation, “I am working on a chair.” That particular chair came to be known as the Red Chair, thanks to the color of its oxhide upholstery. It is a mahogany side chair, with delicately curved and splayed rear legs and the proportions of a Chippendale cabriole chair, although there are no decorations and the inviting concave front rail of the seat is not a Chippendale detail.
The much-admired Red Chair won a grand prix medal at the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona, the same event at which Mies van der Rohe unveiled the Barcelona Chair. Klint and Mies shared a modernist sensibility, but not much else. What set the Dane apart from his Bauhaus contemporaries was his devotion to traditional woodworking techniques, and a preference for adapting and distilling rather than inventing. He combined Danish conservatism with a strictly functionalist approach, establishing normative dimensions for furniture, paying close attention to ergonomic comfort, taking care with details, and respecting traditional skills. Above all, he married modern design to old-fashioned craftsmanship.
Unlike many of his friends, Wegner did not apply to the Academy to study under Klint but left the Day School after completing only two years of the three-year course. One has the sense that at twenty-five he was eager to get started. His first job was in the office of the architects Arne Jacobsen and Erik Møller, where he worked on furniture. Jacobsen and Møller were Denmark’s leading modernists, and Wegner’s designs were simple and undecorated, but they were also rooted in tradition: spindle-back Windsor chairs for the reading room of a library, and distinctly conservative mahogany-and-leather armchairs for the council chamber of a city hall. In the early 1940s, even as Denmark was still under Nazi occupation, Wegner began to work on his own, not as a cabinetmaker but as an independent furniture designer.
Denmark is a small country—in 1940 its population was fewer than 4 million, the economy was still primarily agricultural, and industrialization had barely begun. Furniture was not produced in factories but in small workshops staffed by cabinetmakers and joiners who used traditional woodworking tools and techniques. Danish furniture designers generally collaborated with these workshops, and Wegner established a relationship with the master cabinetmaker Johannes Hansen (no relation to Carl Hansen). One of their first projects—in 1944—was a rocking chair. Its high back and woven seat recall a rush-bottom Shaker rocker, except that instead of a ladder back it had tapered spindles, as slender as those of an American Windsor chair. The rockers of a rocking chair must be slightly splayed, for if they are parallel the rocking movement will cause the chair to creep across the floor. Wegner increased the angle and made the proportions of the seat more generous, like a wedge-shaped cabriole chair. The seat was handwoven three-ply twisted paper cord.1 The four-panel weaving was a traditional technique that produced a pleasantly shaped seat. The chair proved extremely popular and remains in production today.
The crest rail of Wegner’s rocking chair is tall enough to support the head; I know because this is the chair I sit on when I watch television. This chair affords me great pleasure, n
ot only because it is comfortable but also because it feels good. The woven seat has a pleasant resilience, the arms are slightly curved and rounded, and the turned pieces have bulging shapes that I can’t help stroking. The beechwood has a clear lacquer finish that allows the wood grain to come through.
Rocking chair (Hans Wegner)
In 1947, three years after designing the rather conservative rocker, Wegner and Hansen’s foreman, Nils Thomsen, produced an unusual lounge chair. The exaggerated hoop-back and slender spindles were obviously influenced by the sack-back Windsor chair, although the seat was woven cord rather than solid wood, and the chair was much lower, making for more relaxed sitting. It was a wonderful chair to look at, and equally wonderful to sit on. Part of the comfort was the result of the round spindles being flattened at the precise points where one’s shoulders touched the wood. The flattened portions produced a decorative pattern similar to the eyes of a peacock’s tail, which led one of Wegner’s colleagues to christen it the Peacock Chair.2 The striking Peacock Chair brought Wegner instant acclaim and marked him as an original talent. Its combination of practicality and lavishness is at odds with Kaare Klint’s strait-laced functionalism. Instead, the Peacock Chair manages to be cleanly modern, resolutely old-fashioned, and glamorous, all at the same time.
Peacock Chair (Hans Wegner)
Wegner’s chairs were the result of careful study. After exploring an idea in sketch form, he would make a 1:5 scale model, as much as possible using the actual materials of the finished product; for example, making the frames of wood and weaving the cord seats out of string. The models, which are about eight inches high, look remarkably realistic in photographs. Next, a full-size prototype would be built by a cabinetmaker to test construction details and sitting comfort. The final design was recorded by Wegner in a full-size drawing in which views of the entire chair—side, front, and top—were shown overlapping on a single sheet.
The use of models and mock-ups recalls the cabinetmakers and ébénistes of the eighteenth century. Wegner saw no contradiction between the demands of industrialization and the furniture maker’s traditional craft. The distinction between design and workmanship was highlighted by the British design theorist (and accomplished woodworker) David Pye: “Design is what, for practical purposes, can be conveyed in words and by drawing: workmanship is what, for practical purposes, can not.” In Wegner’s chairs, the two are given equal weight. The design idea is usually apparent first, but the workmanship creeps up on you after you sit down: the tight weave of the paper cord, the smooth shaping of the arms, the subtle taper of a spindle.
The Round One
To encourage innovation and stimulate sales, the 350-year-old Copenhagen Cabinetmakers Guild held an annual exhibition that introduced new works to the public. The exhibition of 1949 featured a number of chairs that used molded plywood. Thanks to the well-publicized success of the Eames potato-chip chair, molded plywood was the material of the moment. Børge Mogensen, who had been Klint’s assistant, and was a friend and sometime collaborator of Wegner, showed a plywood chair with teardrop-shaped cutouts. An armchair designed by Bender Madsen and Ejner Larsen, likewise Klint’s students, used one piece of shaped plywood to form the back and arms. Jacob Kjær, a cabinetmaker, made an armchair that incorporated a leather-covered plywood seat and back, and Birthe and Torsten Johansson designed an armchair that combined molded teak plywood with an oak frame. Finn Juhl, the most flamboyant of the Danish designers, unveiled a side chair and an armchair—portentously named the Egyptian Chair and the Chieftain’s Chair—that combined molded plywood with teak and walnut in dramatic fashion.
Not to be outdone, Wegner and Hansen also entered a molded plywood chair. Wegner had visited the Isokon factory in England, which manufactured Breuer’s plywood furniture. Hansen was loathe to invest in the equipment required to mold three-dimensional shells, so Wegner used plywood shells that were bent in only two dimensions. The three shells—seat, back, and headrest—were supported on a bentwood frame. The commodious chair was unusual—more reclined than a lounge chair, but more vertical than a chaise longue.3 A loose sheepskin covered the seat. High tooling costs prevented the three-shell chair from going into production, and it would be another fourteen years before Wegner had the opportunity to design the shell chair that I saw in the New York showroom.
The Hansen-Wegner booth in the 1949 exhibition included an unobtrusive armchair that the designer referred to as “the round one.” It had been something of an afterthought. Hansen, who served as president of the cabinetmakers’ guild, thought that there were too many plywood chairs in the exhibition, and at the last minute he asked Wegner if he had any designs for a more traditional chair. “What do you do when you want to make something typically Danish?” Wegner later recalled. “First, there is oak; oak is typically Danish. Then there’s the construction; four equal legs assembled with four frames held together at the top by a wreath.” The wreathlike continuous top rail was similar to the bow of a traditional low-back Windsor chair, but shaped like a propellor blade, horizontal armrests morphing into a vertical back support. Using native oak was unusual at a time when most Danish designers favored tropical woods such as Cuban mahogany, Brazilian rosewood, and especially teak. Wegner gave the oak a vegetable-based soaped finish that left the surface looking almost like raw wood. The seat was woven cane. The minimal design fulfilled the modernist dictum “Form follows function” without appearing in any way industrial.
Round chair with padded seat (Hans Wegner)
The 1949 Copenhagen exhibition was attended by the foreign press for the first time. The following year, Interiors, an influential American magazine for architects and interior designers, included an article on the exhibition, which was the first coverage of modern Danish furniture in the American media. No fewer than three of the six pages were devoted to Wegner’s work. The article led off with the three-shell chair, and gave pride of place—a full-page photograph—to the round chair. “The sturdy legs are tapered just enough to seem muscular rather than overfed, and the seat dips slightly to look willing but not seductive,” read the caption.
The Interiors article brought Danish furniture—and Wegner—international recognition. Shortly after the article appeared, he had a visit from a group of Chicago businessmen who were interested in the round chair for their downtown club. Wegner recalled the incident:
The Americans came to Denmark to inquire whether they could buy or make some of them. Johannes Hansen’s workshop was small, with only five or six assistants. They were not used to producing large numbers. If they could just sell the four chairs we made for the show, we would be happy. The Americans were not satisfied with that. They asked if they could get four hundred of them. I could certainly also ask Fritz Hansen [a large furniture maker]—and I did—but Johannes Hansen certainly didn’t like that. The Americans wanted to make the chair in the United States. And I didn’t like that. It was designed for Danish craftsmen.
Eventually an agreement was reached and two years later the order was filled. But production remained—and remains today—in Denmark. Wegner was used to having personal oversight of the fabrication process, and the round chair, despite its visual simplicity, is not easy to manufacture. For example, the top rail is formed of three separate pieces of oak cut from the same plank so the grain matches. All the joints are mortised and tenoned, and although the separate parts are today milled and turned on automated machines, they require hand assembly, shaping, and sanding. The round chair remains one of Wegner’s more expensive chairs.
Shortly after the 1949 exhibition, Wegner was approached by Carl Hansen & Søn with a request for a dining chair that was similar to the round chair but more suited to mass production. Wegner had seen an illustration of a traditional Chinese folding chair in which the rear legs bent forward to carry the top rail, and he incorporated that feature, which simplified the construction; in addition he shortened the arms to facilitate sitting at the table. The top rail was steam-bent beech; the sea
t was woven paper cord. The result was more rustic than the sophisticated round chair, although with a distinctive “Oriental” character thanks to the Y-shaped splat. The Y shape was not arbitrary; it accommodated the sitter’s spine and gave extra support to the top rail. What came to be known as the Wishbone Chair turned out to be Wegner’s bestselling chair.
Wishbone Chair (Hans Wegner)
Wegner designed the Wishbone Chair with factory production in mind. The fourteen pieces of wood were turned and milled by machine, and only three of them required steam-bending. On the other hand, it took a craftsman one hour to weave the four hundred feet of paper cord into a seat, and much of the finishing was done by hand. This combination of machine production and handwork—design and workmanship—has been called “industrialized craftsmanship.” In fact, most of the early modernist chairs by Breuer and Mies also required a great deal of handwork. “If you knew how much polishing work goes into making a Barcelona Chair, you wouldn’t call it an industrially made chair,” Wegner once wryly remarked. But the handwork in Wegner’s chairs—woven cord and scarfed joints—was not remedial; it was intentional and carefully integrated with factory work. The combination proved to be remarkably efficient. The price of a “crafted” Wishbone Chair today is competitive with other modern classics: it costs about the same as an Eames potato-chip chair, and considerably less than a Breuer Cesca or a Mies MR10. “I have always wanted to make unexceptional things of an exceptionally high quality that ordinary people could afford,” said Wegner. With the Wishbone Chair, he succeeded.
Now I Sit Me Down Page 12
