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pp550 Peacock Chair
Hans J. Wegner, 1947

The PP550 peacock chair was designed by Hans Wegner in 1947, in line with the classic Windsor chairs and their famous backs made of bars. The originality of the PP550 comes from the shape of its backrest and bars. Wegner imagined a very ergonomic shape, enveloping and comfortable: each bar has a widened and flat part, positioned exactly where the shoulder blades of a seated person come.

They thus form a kind of crown, like the wheel of a peacock. This was the first impression of the famous designer Finn Juhl, who called the PP550 "Peacock" by seeing it for the first time. The name has remained. The PP550 Peacock chair is available in solid ash and oak, in a multitude of finishes. Its seat comes in natural or black paper cord. It is possible to have the chair's armrests in teak.

Wood ash or oak, in several finishes

Paper cord natural or black

soaped oak

oiled oak

white oiled oak

soaped ash

white oiled 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