Wishbone CH24 color – Carl Hansen

Hans J. Wegner was born in 1914 in Tønder, Denmark, the son of a shoemaker. At the age of 17, he finished his apprenticeship as a cabinetmaker with H. F. Stahlberg, in whose workshops Wegner’s first design experiments took form. He moved to Copenhagen as a 20 year-old, and attended the School of Arts and Crafts from 1936 – 1938 before he began working as an architect.

As a young architect, Wegner joined Arne Jacobsen and Erik Møller in Århus, working on furniture design for the new Århus city hall in 1940. It was during the same year that Wegner began collaborating with master cabinetmaker, Johannes Hansen, who was a driving force in bringing new furniture design to the Danish public.

The Copenhagen Museum of Art and Industry acquired its first Wegner chair in 1942.

Wegner started his own design office in 1943. It was in 1944 that he designed the first “Chinese chair” in a series of new chairs that were inspired by portraits of Danish merchants sitting in Ming chairs. One of these chairs, the “Wishbone Chair”, designed in 1949 and produced by Carl Hansen & Son in Odense since 1950, became the most successful of all Wegner chairs.

Among Danish furniture designers, Hans J. Wegner is considered one of the most creative and productive. He has received practically every major recognition given to designers, including the Lunning prize, the grand prix of the Milan Triennale, Sweden’s Prince Eugen medal and the Danish Eckersberg medal. Wegner is an honorary Royal designer for industry of the Royal Society of Arts in London. Almost all of the world’s major design museums – from The Museum of Modern Art in New York to Die Neue Sammlung in Munich – include his furniture in their collections.

Hans J. Wegner died in Denmark in January, 2007.

Hans J. Wegner’s  contribution to Danish Modern:

- First a cabinetmaker, then a designer: integrates exacting joinery techniques and exquisite form.

- A deep respect for wood and its characteristics – and an abiding curiosity about other natural materials

- Brings an organic, natural softness to formalistic minimalism

- Generally regarded as ”the master of the chair”, with more than 400 chair designs to his name

Interior and furniture designer, academic and creative director Ilse Crawford has a simple mission: to put human needs and desires at the center of all that she does. At her London-based multi-disciplinary studio, Studioilse, she brings this philosophy to life, creating environments where humans feel comfortable – from public spaces that make people feel at home to comfortable homes that make sense for those who live in them.

A core idea for Ilse Crawford is « framing life ». This means designing furniture and products that support and enhance human behavior and everyday actions. As founder of the department of Man and Wellbeing at the Design Academy Eindhoven, Crawford’s mission extends to “nurturing a new generation of students to always question why and how their work improves the reality of life.”

In 2014, Ilse Crawford was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her services to design. She was subsequently awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2021.