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DESIGNER HANS WEGNER
AMPLE SEATING FOR ALL BY TOM HOEPF Hans J. Wegner designed furniture for everyman, but the American public took notice when two future U.S. presidents sat in his chairs on national television. Danish furniture was the rage among cosmopolitan Americans in 1960 when Sen. John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard M. Nixon met in the first presidential campaign debate. The sight of the candidates seated in the TV studio in chairs designed by Wegner affirmed the arrival of Danish Modern in mainstream America. "I liken it to the Antiques Roadshow. It gave him a broader public awareness, but people knew of him before that,” said Jane Prentiss, 20th century furniture specialist for Skinner Inc., Bolton Mass. Wegner’s furniture designs were already highly regarded. Interiors magazine had proclaimed “the Round one,” as Wegner called it, “the world’s most beautiful chair” and featured it on a cover a decade earlier. Ever since its 1960 TV debut, the elegant classic has been called simply “The Chair.” Wegner died Jan. 26, 2007 in Copenhagen. He was 92. The obituary in the New York Times, written by David Colman, stated that Wegner’s “Danish Modern furniture – most famously his chairs – helped change the course of design history in the 1950s and ’60s by sanding modernism’s sharp edges and giving aesthetes a comfortable seat.” With more than 500 different chair designs to his credit, Wegner was the most prolific Danish designer. Like his Danish contemporaries Arne Jacobsen, Finn Juhl, Borge Mogensen and Poul Kjaerholm, Wegner took a sculptural and organic approach to furniture, combining high quality and traditional craftsmanship with modernist principles of simplicity and beauty. Above all, Wegner’s chairs are as comfortable as they are beautiful.  ................................................ The first lamp P.V. Jensen Klint was an architect and also a far-sighted and visionary gentleman. He had designed a stoneware oil lamp which needed an appropriate shade. What does the gifted and curious designer do? He invents a unique product – a lamp shade with folding across the pleats. P.V. Jensen was a Bachelor of Engineering, an architect and a painter. One must accentuate two achievements which still remain after his death. One is the Grundtvig Church in Copenhagen and the other is the cross pleated lamp shade which 40 years later went into production under the company name of LE KLINT. LE KLINT – the company Tage Klint, son of P.V. Jensen Klint, was the creative entrepreneur who in 1943 chose to turn the family’s artistically folded lamp shades into a regular business. He also added a crucial detail to the original shades; the unique “collar” at the top of the lamp, designed to fix the shade to the metal stand. Furthermore, he designed a number of lamps which have all been a part of LE KLINT’s assortment. In 1953 his son, Jan Klint, took over the company. As a business man, he was years ahead of his time. In order to secure his employees, he created a fund which has since 1972 been in charge of the company LE KLINT. In addition, the fund supports former employees, designers and architects. True classics Kaare Klint was the son of P.V. Jensen Klint. He was a well-known and respected architect and a skilled craftsman and designer who has had considerable influence on Danish furniture making. The company LE KLINT was blessed with Kaare Klint’s great talent from the beginning. Today, the “fruit lantern” which he created in 1944, is as successful as ever and one of the company’s most popular lamps. An impressive list of competent and well-reputed designers and architects have designed LE KLINT shades and lamps throughout the years. There is no doubt that this is one of the explanations why LE KLINT-lamps are considered “modern classics”.     ................................................ Copi from Architonic Product Letter 07.2008 New Fritz Hansen Showroom The historic Danish brand for contemporary design, opens its first showroom in Milan, designed by the architect Stefano Tagliacarne... Situated in a high-level context at Corso Garibaldi 77, the Fritz Hansen showroom is the mirror of company philosophy and a stage for the brand’s collections, displayed on a 340 square meters surface divided into three levels: the basement of 70 sqm; the ground floor of 40 sqm; and the first floor of 230 sqm well visible from the exterior.  The Fritz Hansen Milan showroom has various missions: to communicate the rich history of the Danish brand and its famous collections, to emphasize the brand image imprinted by the masterpieces of Arne Jacobsen and Poul Kjaerholm and to express the values of Danish culture in relation to the Italian context. These premises have led architect Stefano Tagliacarne to design an informal exhibition space where Fritz Hansen design collections are the true protagonists. This means above all having minimized any kind of additional decoration, emphasizing textures, finishes and natural features of the structural elements of the space as well as the exposed products, which, in that way, become decorative elements themselves. ................................................ PH Artichoke Gold  Stylish 50 anniversary for PH Artichoke PH Artichoke celebrates its 50 anniversary and is as fashionable as never before. Louis Poulsen celebrates the anniversary by offering 50 units of the largest PH Artichoke with leaves gilded in 24-carat gold. ................................................  Hammershøi Exhibition på Royal Academy  Vilhelm Hammershøi The Poetry of Silence 28 June – 7 September 2008 Royal Academy of Arts The Royal Academy of Arts will be holding the first Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916) retrospective in the UK this June. The exhibition will feature over 60 paintings spanning the career of this celebrated Danish artist. The works have been selected from museums and private collections in Europe, the United States and Japan. Hammershøi's most compelling works are his quiet, haunting interiors, their emptiness disturbed only occasionally by the presence of a solitary, graceful figure, often the artist’s wife. Painted within a small tonal range of implied greys, these sparsely-furnished rooms exude an almost hypnotic quietude and sense of melancholic introspection. Hammershøi portrays in muted tones and with decisive geometric stringency his sparsely-furnished apartments. In so doing, Hammershøi consistently dispenses with anecdotal detail transforming the interiors into hermetically-sealed places of disturbing emptiness. With refined discretion Hammershøi uses the apartment as a pictorial laboratory to make us sense the emotional abyss behind the façade. www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/hammershoi/ ILL: Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864 – 1916), Interior with Young Woman seen from the Back, c.1903–04. Oil on canvas, 61 x 50.5 cm. Randers Kunstmuseum. Photo Niels Erik Høybye ................................................ Greenbiz |
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Jens Quistgaard, 88, a Designer of Popular Tableware, Is Dead
Published: February 2, 2008 Jens Quistgaard, a celebrated Danish industrial designer whose clean-lined and immensely popular pieces for the Dansk brand of tableware helped define the Scandinavian Modern style for postwar Americans, died on Jan. 4 at his home in Vordingborg, Denmark. He was 88.  Jens Quistgaard in 1996.  A pot designed by Mr. Quistgaard. He created the Kobenstyle cookware line. The death was confirmed by Paul Thonis, the design director for Dansk. News of Mr. Quistgaard’s death was not made public outside Scandinavia until this week. Today a division of the Lenox Group, Dansk was founded in 1954 by Ted Nierenberg, an American entrepreneur and engineer. Originally based in Great Neck, N.Y., the company quickly became known for making sophisticated European styles accessible to the average American consumer. Working from his studio in Copenhagen, Mr. Quistgaard designed for Dansk from its inception until the mid-1980s. A largely self-taught craftsman, Mr. Quistgaard was known for his fluid lines and for using unusual materials, often in combination. His signature pieces included salad bowls and cutting boards of teak and other exotic woods, and elegant stainless-steel flatware that was an affordable alternative to sterling silver. Mr. Quistgaard’s bowls were often made from separate staves of wood arranged in a circle, much as barrels are built. This used less wood than turning the bowls on a lathe and gave them striking radial lines in the process. He was also one of the first designers to rehabilitate enameled steel as a medium for cookware. For years enameled steel pots were considered lowbrow — flimsy speckled things that were at home over a campfire but not in a bourgeois kitchen. Seeking a pot that would be lighter and less expensive than cast iron, Mr. Quistgaard created the Kobenstyle line of steel cookware, which Dansk released in 1956. Sturdy, yet light and graceful, it was enameled in a range of vivid solid colors, including an intoxicating fire-engine red. As a sign that the pots were handsome enough to be put on the table, their lids, with distinctive flat cruciform handles, doubled as trivets. Jens Harald Quistgaard was born in Denmark on April 23, 1919. His father, Harald, was a well-known sculptor who provided his son’s only formal training. As a child, Jens cheerfully made his own toys from the scraps of wood his father brought home. For Christmas, the 14-year-old Jens requested, and received, a blacksmith forge and anvil. As a young man, Mr. Quistgaard served an apprenticeship at Georg Jensen, the well-known Danish silversmiths. During World War II, he was a member of the Danish underground. In 1954 Mr. Nierenberg was visiting Copenhagen, where he caught sight of hand-forged flatware by Mr. Quistgaard in a museum. It was made of stainless steel with teak handles, an unusual marriage of materials at the time. He sought out Mr. Quistgaard, persuaded him that his singular creations could be properly mass-produced, and Dansk was born. Mr. Quistgaard’s survivors include a son, Anders; a daughter, Jette; and several grandchildren. Information on other survivors could not be confirmed. His work, which won many international awards, is in the permanent collections of major museums, among them the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art and the Louvre. Tony Cenicola/The New York Times ................................................ Farewell to furniture icon By The Copenhagen Post One of the last giants of Danish design, Hans J Wegner, leaves behind a series of timeless furniture masterpieces John F Kennedy lounged nonchalantly in a Hans J Wegner chair as he trumped Richard Nixon. But it was in providing comfortable yet elegant places to sit for the rest of the world that Wegner left his mark. On Thursday, Wegner, the last great figure of Danish design's Golden Age, died. He was 92. Born 2 April 1914 in southern Jutland, Wegner learned early in life to appreciate the quality craftsmanship that shaped his later work. As the son of a shoemaker, he was surrounded by tools and carved small ships in what would become his favourite medium: wood. After travelling to Copenhagen to study at the School of Arts and Crafts, Wegner began to develop the style of simple yet sleek furniture that would become his trademark. For Wegner, it was not enough that furniture looked good; it also had to feel good. From the solid, round lines of 'the Chair' which Kennedy sat in, to the more delicate 'Peacock' and 'Y-chair', Wegner was able to find a language for modern furniture that earned him a spot alongside other leading figures such as Arne Jacobsen, Børge Mogensen and Verner Panton. That the chairs and tables he created as an exercise in democratic design have become priceless collectables adds a touch of irony to his legacy. ................................................ Arne Jacobsen. (1902-71) Danish Furniture designer. The Royal Hotel 1958-60, situated in Copenhagen, is one of Arne Jacobsen's masterpieces. For the decoration of the hotel he designed several pieces of furniture, lamps and fabrics, and also cutlery, glasses, and door handles. As significant counterpoints to the stiffly upright, monumental building his easy chair, the "Swan" and the "Egg", stand out as organic sculptures. |
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Astrid Holm, forgotten Danish pioneer of fauvism
By Jane Graham Postscript, Denmark From Matisse student to teacher, one of the key cogs in Danish modernist painting has suffered decades of neglect. She was a teacher, a curator, a painter and a textile artist. With so many strings to her bow, Astrid Holm's energy and initiative probably did more for the development of Scandinavian art than it did her own fame. Since a posthumous memorial, exhibition at the art organisation (Kunstforeningen) premises in Gammel Strand Copenhagen in 1939, however, she seems to have been packed away and largely forgotten. The past couple of years though have seen a revival of interest in the work of Astris Valberg Holm ( 1876-1937 ). The work of this painter, who immersed herself in the colours as well as the buzzing artistic milieu of countries like Italy and France and brought all her inspiration back home to Denmark, has returned to the galleries. One of her tapestries, The Queen of Saba ( 1936 ) is on permanent display at Stockholm"s National Museum (Sweden). Denmark's own National gallery, Statens Museum for Kunst, returned her to a place in national art history when they purchased her painting View Over Collioure (1913) in 2005. ................................................ Finn Juhl (1912 - 1989) Most people have heard about or are that lucky to accually own a piece of Finn Juhl. Do you? I just became "one of them". I located and was able to purchase a wonderfull Highback Lounge Chair in black Leather. YES! Some information about this great furniture designer (architect): Finn Juhl was born in 1912, He became highly regarded as an architect, especially as a designer in interiors. Finn Juhl belived in the organic shape. Today most of us know about and appriciates. Finn Juhl particular created the style by separating the various structural elements of a given piece of furniture in such a way that the tensions and forces acting upon them are expresses dramatically. Juhl's first masterpiece was the "Pelican" chair, Designed in 1939, and produced in tiny numbers in 1940. Another masterpiece was the "Tivoli Sofa" Designed in 1957, maker Bovirke. See the picture and detailed Decription below. |
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Category Description Year Designer Maker Metal Type Upholstry Type Function/Form Media Source Photographer Verified by RP no. |
Sofa Tivoli Sofa 1957 Juhl, Finn 1912-1989 Bovirke and Hansen & Sørensen Tube Steel Chrome Fabric 3-seat DKH Print Thorsen Møbler, Aarhus Ingemann Hanne Wilhelm Hansen & Bård Henriksen 211001 RP02531 |
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