Folding chair pp512
PP Møbler – Hans J.Wegner, 1949

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Folding chair pp512 PP Møbler – Hans J.Wegner, 1949

Presented along with the Round Chair at the legendary 1949 Cabinetmakers’ Guild’s Autumn Exhibition, the Folding Chair is so elegantly solved that only Wegner could have designed it. Although

its shape obviously pays homage to the Barcelona Chair by the renowned Bauhaus architect Mies van der Rohe, the Folding Chair nonetheless reveals the unique skill so characteristic of Wegner himself.

This modern and minimalistic construction exhibits the superb handling of two basic natural materials, solid wood and cane.

The wooden handles serve as hand-rests, but they also intersect with the otherwise continuing cane seat causing an aesthetic deviation, which makes the cane work look well balanced rather than overdone.

The Folding Chair appears quite straightforward and elegant in use and thus offers a tangible experience of quality materials, however, when hanging neatly folded on the wall it becomes a breathtaking piece of art.

pp512 comes with seat in nature or light cane. The material used in caning chairs is derived from the peeled bark of the rattan vine. It looks somewhat similar to bamboo but is much more flexible.

PP512 Folding chair
from

Hook
from

soaped oak

oiled oak

clear lacquered oak

soaped ash

oiled ash

clear lacquered ash

Hans J. Wegner

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

Folding chair pp512 PP Møbler – Hans J.Wegner, 1949

Folding chair pp512
PP Møbler – Hans J.Wegner, 1949