10 Pioneers of Modern Scandinavian Design

Rare easy chair “Bukkestole” by Hans Wegner, in “Wegner Red” with tilting canvas back and canvas seat, chrome bolts. Produced by Johannes Hansen, Copenhagen, Denmark 1959. From Collage 20th Century Classics on Incollect.

The iconic and endearing Papa Bear chair and ottoman by Hans Wegner for A.P. Stolen, Denmark, 1951. From De Angelis on Incollect. 

Hans Wegner was among the most successful of the Scandinavian furniture makers. His original pieces of furniture are bought and sold through many dealers and also at auction. Trained as an architect and carpenter, Wegner designed more than 500 chairs, not to mention numerous sofas, tables, desks, lights and a variety of interior objects. Most, if not all, were executed in natural materials, especially in wood with a signature accent on simplicity of style and easy comfort. His chairs are icons of 20th century design, such as his famous “Shell” chair, from 1963, with its convex shape for comfort. His designs often took inspiration from design history: his “Papa Bear” chair designed in 1951 is a fanciful remodeling of the traditional English wingback chair, while the “Wishbone Chair” (1949) and the “China Chair” (1944) take inspiration from Ming dynasty Chinese furniture. The most prized designs among collectors are early pieces, produced in collaboration with furniture maker Johannes Hansen.

The impact and influence of Paavo Tynell on interior lighting design in homes all over the world over the past century cannot be overstated, even if, today, it is his famous hand-made custom Snowflake Chandeliers that command the most media attention as well as enormous prices in galleries and at auction. Tynell was an industrial and commercial lighting designer with a background in metalworking who began his long, successful career producing custom lighting for buildings for Scandinavian architects. In 1918, with colleagues, he founded his own design firm Taito Oy, the first industrial producer of lighting fixtures in Finland and for the next half century they designed and produced dozens of practical, simple, elegant, affordable lighting products that were sold internationally. His perforated metal pendant lamps were an especially popular product. So too were his range of floor lamps, including the Model 9602 floor lamp designed in 1938 with a narrow stem of metal wrapped in rattan supporting brass details and a broad, conical raffia or wicker shade; and the 1940s Model 9609 lamp in which three brass feet support an adjustable cone-like lampshade. His lamps are sensual, simple, elegant, functional, the hallmark of everything Tynell produced.

Børge Møgensen designs may not be immediately identifiable to the general public but nonetheless have filtered into the pantheon of 20th-century design as part of the overall international appreciation of Danish mid-century furniture, with its emphasis on comfort as well as functional, simple forms. He completed training as a carpenter and as an architect and his furniture is on the whole geometric and somewhat more casual in contrast to the structured if organic shapes and forms found in the work of his colleagues Hans Wegener and Arne Jacobsen. His “Spanish’ armchair, designed in 1958 for Fredericia Stolefabrik & Dahlman is his most recognizable design and is a much-prized item among collectors, especially early, individually numbered models between 1959 and 1962 that are made of solid oak and with hand-stitched adjustable leather straps for the back and seat. The design was inspired by traditional seating construction used in Spain — Møgensen saw similar chair designs on a trip through Spain. Other important chair designs include the low-riding “Hunting Chair” with an exposed wooden frame made of oak, leather and brass from 1950 and a prototype for mass-manufactured folding, casual sports or beach chairs. The Model 2254 or “Sled” adjustable lounge chairs have inspired generations of deck chairs.

Arne Jacobsen was an architect and also a designer and designed a wide range of interior furniture with an eye keenly attuned towards efficiency and practicality in all areas of a design — his designs are creative but simple, the choice of shapes, forms and even construction materials oriented commercially to enable mass production. His use of industrial materials and new technology made his designs both original and affordable and led to great popularity worldwide. Seating is where Jacobsen really excelled — he created some of the most iconic chairs of Scandinavian design including the “Egg Chair,” the “Swan Chair”, and the “Ant Chair” which was inspired by the work of Charles Eames after Jacobsen bought one of his plywood chairs and placed it in his studio to study. Jacobsen’s chairs were all designed for Fritz Hansen, who also produced the “Sevener” or Model 3117 series of chairs in various materials — a versatile, brilliantly simple swiveling chair on wheels with a winged back splat and similar seating base designed in 1955. “Sevener” is one of the best-selling chairs of all time and is still in mass production under a license along with many of Jacobsen’s other signature chair designs.

The words simple and functional apply to the work of many Scandinavian designers. But when it comes to Finn Juhl they mean something else entirely: he was a design maverick among his peers, blessed with the same avant garde attitude as Jacobsen when it came to design concepts and yet firmly committed to the core principles of Scandinavian mid-century design including the use of natural materials and fine craftsmanship. His “Pelican Chair” designed in 1940 and still in production today after more than 80 years, is a radical piece of organic contemporary sculpture, Surrealist in its conception with an anthropomorphic shape that gracefully and warmly embraces the sitter. The reception of his work was initially somewhat frosty, but over time was proven popular as well as influential, because it took Scandinavian design in a more playful direction. Juhl had a conventional early career, studying architecture and design and then working briefly as an architect before establishing his own design firm in 1945 — the same year that he released his NV45 lounge chair designed for Niels Vodder, with a free-floating, suspended back and seating area on a seemingly detached, fluidly organic wooden frame that is widely regarded as a quiet revolution in the history of chair design. He completely detached the base and back of the chair from the supporting frame. This became a signature element in subsequent designs like his 1954 elegant but no less inventive “Spade” armchairs, with a slatted wood back and seat support suspending loose upholstered cushions. Juhl was also one of the first Scandinavian designers to experiment with color which can be seen in a range of cabinets and credenzas that remain highly prized today.

Trained as an architect and cabinetmaker, Arne Vodder is admired first and foremost for his Model 29A sideboard made inf rosewood, often accented with colorful reversible door panels. It is one of Vodder’s most popular and recognizable designs, shown at the Milan Triennale in 1957 where it won First Prize. Finn Juhl was his teacher at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, and became his mentor, friend and later his business partner in the production of furniture. Vodder had an important solo career as a designer for Fritz Hansen, France & Søn and Sibast Mobler among other furniture companies. His designs are in the manner of Juhl — generally simple, functional, and geometric in appearance, though Vodder always insisted that his work was inspired by natural forms. He worked primarily in wood, primarily rosewood and teak. The designs lend themselves well to office environments, and his furniture was chosen by Jimmy Carter for the White House, and for the offices of President Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Pope Paul VI.

Kai Kristiansen is another Danish designer with a background in cabinetmaking who studied with Kaare Klint at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Some of his designs have been in production for more than six decades with Danish manufacturers Fritz Hansen, Magnus Olesen, and others, and include his Model 31 and Model 42 dining chairs made originally of teak and rosewood with leather seats for Schou Andersen and that are instantly distinguished by their gentle gratefulness as much as the simplicity of design — qualities which carry over into all of his designs for chairs, desks, cabinets, shelving and more. He preferred to work in teak as well as rosewood, much like his contemporaries, with an attention to craftsmanship in the form of invisible joins and a fluidity of lines. This made his designs challenging to produce as well as expensive and therefore some of his most creative designs went out of production. His Model 42 dining chair from 1956 with an ergonomic curved backrest and short, angular arm rests remains a classic of 20th century design, as does his No 121 “Paper Knife” lounge chair in teak, designed for Magnus Olesen, with its long, gentle sloping armrests and slightly arched backrest for comfort.

Jens Risom has a special, unusual place in the history of Scandinavian design. He achieved success early in his career and is one of the few serious designers to have been profiled both in the pages of the New York Times as well as in Playboy! He almost single-handedly introduced Scandinavian design to the United States after emigrating to New York in 1939, then in 1942 in collaboration with Hans Knoll, he designed his first furniture collection and launched the Knoll furniture company. Risom went on to found his own company in 1946 and over the next half century contributed a catalog of outstandingly innovative and memorable designs to 20th-century furniture. His designs remain true to tradition — functional, understated forms expertly crafted expertly, but Rison paid more attention to comfort and casual ease in design as well as manufacturing. It was his signature use of strapping that sets him apart from his peers. He first experimented with nylon straps during World War II when materials were scarce, to create his famous Knoll Model 666 Side chair. The straps were interwoven to form a tight cross hatching design which was structurally sound, comfortable and aesthetically pleasing. He integrated the strap concept into many other designs including lounges, chaises, chairs, stools. His other popular designs include several desks and a magazine table from 1949.

A rare sofa model PK-31/3 3-Seater sofa in original cognac leather upholstery and matte finish steel frame. Poul Kjærholm’s modular PK31 series included an armchair in a perfect 76cm cube and 2 or 3-seater sofas, created by connecting the individual seating units to a steel bar base. Such was Kjærholm’s desire to preserve purity of form that the individual modules can be seen when viewed from the back. Produced by E. Kold Christensen, Denmark, 1958. From Studio Schalling on Incollect.

Poul Kjaerholm is unique among the mid-century Scandinavian designers because his work is distinguished by his use of a steel component to contrast with natural materials such as leather, wood and cane. Kjaerholm embraced not only industrial materials but industrial production methods over traditional Scandinavian hand craftsmanship, both to enable mass manufacturing of his designs and because he was interested in the structural properties of steel, which allowed him to create thinner, finer supports for his designs. This can be seen in his now famous PK31 lounge chair and sofa produced by E. Kold Christensen, or his PK61A Coffee table with glass top, the PK35 lounge chair, or his PK9 and PK12 chairs combining leather upholstery with curved steel bases. His use of steel sets him apart from his peers aesthetically, along with an uncompromising minimalism — there is nothing extraneous in his furniture, exemplified in his sleek PK 22 Chair for Fritz Hansen.

Plastic is the signature element in the numerous designs of Verner Panton, one of Denmark’s most innovative 20th-century designers. Panton understood and also benefited from years of innovation on the part of his Danish design colleagues, especially Arne Jacobsen, with whom he began his career as an apprentice in 1950 before founding his own design studio in 1955. But he quickly forged his own, wildly distinctive path as a designer inspired by new materials and technology in the field of molded plastic and in so doing, in terms of availability and price point, made Scandinavian design accessible to a worldwide population. His “Panton Chair”, an instant masterpiece of modern design conceived in 1959 and produced serially by Vitra in 1967, still in production, is widely regarded by design historians as the first fully formed molded seat made from a single durable piece of injected plastic. The flexibility of the material coupled with the cantilevered design make it incredibly comfortable as well as versatile. Injection molding allowed designs to be manufactured in a range of colors and sizes, including the conical “Cone Chair,” which was designed in 1958 as part of the furnishings conceived for the restaurant his father managed.