I did not own a single piece of Scandinavian furniture until last month and now that I think of it, I find that quite unbelievable. After all, Scandinavians dominated the world of design in the first half of the 20th Century and I remember clearly that through much of my youth, I was surrounded by Scandinavian furniture. Come to think of it, I’m sure that a few of my aunts and uncles still have original Scandinavian teak dining chairs, tables and sideboards in excellent condition; I should pop ‘round and give them a closer look to see if there are any treasures to be had.
I wasn’t out to buy a chair when I walked into Tampas, a relatively new design shop on Laurier Street in Montreal. Honest. The store has an eclectic range of items from a wide variety of designers and I must say I found it a welcome change from the regular Montreal design stalwarts. And then, casually strolling through the store, it caught my eye: Hans Wegner’s Wishbone Chair. This is a chair I was very familiar with and it is certainly a classic but somehow I had never considered adding it to my collection. Maybe my tastes are changing as I get older or maybe they’re just getting more refined. My Danish architect friend Peter Schionning would surely say it is the latter. I bought the chair.
The Wishbone Chair is also known as the Y-Chair as well as CH-24, its production code. It was designed by Hans J Wegner in 1949 and put into production by Carl Hansen & Son in 1950. Apart from his Round Chair, used during the CBS televised presidential debates between John F Kennedy and Richard M Nixon in 1960, the Wishbone Chair is Wegner’s most famous.
“A chair is to have no backside,” Wegner said. “It should be beautiful from all sides and angles.” Aside from the bit about the backside, the same can be said about a woman of course. All jest aside though, this is one sexy chair. Just have a look at the back legs: variable diameter from top to bottom and curves that seem to wrap around your waist. The wishbone-shaped backrest is a thing of beauty and is topped with a delicate semicircular rail. The seat is woven papercord. My chair is beech but it is also available in maple, ash, oak, cherry and walnut.
This chair is not about innovative materials or new technology. Nope. This chair is about craftsmanship. While his contemporaries, Eames, Nelson and Saarinen led the way in the field of plastics, tubular metal and advanced molding techniques, Wegner along with his fellow Danes Jacobson, Kjaeholm and Juhl used his skills as a cabinetmaker and joiner to expand the limits of simple, handcrafted wood furniture. This is a light chair but it’s built to last. It is a modern chair with hints of Eastern influence. It yields no hints that it was conceived more than half a century ago. Describing his furniture in an article for the New York Times, Paola Antonelli, curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York put it this way: “First and foremost, it’s comfortable, and saying that it’s comfortable before saying it’s beautiful is really high praise, because the truth is that it’s incredibly elegant.”
Alas, while the chair lives on, it’s designer, Hans Wegner, is no longer. Wegner passed away in Copenhagen on January 26 2007. He was 92. Strange coincidence that I should acquire my first Wegner chair the year he dies.
(All photos by Søren Larsen.)
Joseph Froncioni
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