Now I Sit Me Down (19 page)

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.
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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.
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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 seat 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.

Industrialized craftsmanship was peculiarly Danish. It was a function of a strong woodworking tradition, the survival of the guild system, and the existence of educational institutions such as the Royal Danish Academy and the Cabinetmaker Day School. Its most important feature was the close collaboration between designers and cabinetmakers. The
Interiors
article commented on this arrangement: “The key figures of large American companies—industrial designers or stylists, adapters and efficiency experts, factory workers and industrial craftsmen—do not enter the picture.” For a small country, Denmark had an impressive number of exceptional furniture designers. Among the older generation was Kaare Klint, of course; Mogens Koch, who designed a classic folding chair that resembles a director's chair; and Ole Wanscher, whose Egyptian Stool was modeled on the ancient folding stool. Wegner's contemporaries included Børge Mogensen and Finn Juhl. Younger designers such as Verner Panton and Poul Kjærholm were moving away from craft-based production toward industrial materials and manufacturing processes.