Designer Biographies

Hans J Wegner trained as a cabinet-maker before attending the Copenhagen School of Arts and Crafts, where he later lectured from 1946 to 1953. From 1938 to 1942, he worked as a furniture designer in Arne Jacobsen and Erik Moller´s architectural practice. In 1943, he set up his own office in Gentofte and collaborated with Borge Mogensen in the design of an apartment shown at the 1946 Cabinetmakers´ Exhibition in Copenhagen. Throughout his long career, he has designed furniture extensively for Johannes Hansen and Fritz Hansen. The Royal Society of Arts, London made him an Honorary Royal Designers for Industry in 1959.

Born on April 2, 1914 in Tønder, Denmark, Hans Jørgensen Wegner was the son of a master cobbler, Peter M. Wegner. Hans’ father, a custom shoe manufacturer, gave Hans his first experience in craftsmanship. At an early age, Hans started as a carpenter’s apprentice in Smedegade and began his life-long love working with wood.

Master cabinetmaker, H.F. Stahlberg was his mentor. At Stahlberg’s workshop, Hans Wegner had the opportunity to learn his craft thoroughly and to begin experimenting with furniture design. At age 17, Hans qualified as a cabinetmaker, but he remained at his master’s workshop for three years until his military service began.

After his military duty ended, Wegner began his studies at the School of Arts and Crafts. During this time, Wegner started working with the annual Copenhagen Cabinetmakers’ Guild Exhibitions. The Guild had started in 1927 and had become an excellent avenue for cooperation between master cabinetmakers and the finest designers of the time. While at the School of Arts and Crafts, Hans decided he wanted to be a designer and produce and sell his own furniture.
Wegner attended the School of Arts and Crafts under the guidance of O. Mølgaard Nielsen in 1936. He obtained work in Arhus with architects Erik Møller and Flemming Lassen.

Two years later, Hans was working on his first design commission with architects, Arne Jacobsen and Erik Møller, on the construction of the Arhus Town Hall. The Arhus Town Hall was a good example of how Arne Jacobsen felt that a design should appear consistently throughout a commission, from a building’s architecture through all its details and the components of its interior arrangements and lighting. Hans Wegner’s work on the Town Hall at Arhus became a part of this tradition. Wegner started his own design firm in Arhus in 1943. In 1946, he began working with architect Palle Suenson in Copenhagen. During these years, Hans’ efforts were devoted, in his own words, to “stripping the old chairs of their outer style and letting them appear in their pure construction.”

Another challenging commission that Wegner undertook was to design and produce good, inexpensive furniture for small two and three-room apartments for a family of four. The commission came from Frederik Nielsen, the director of the Danish Cooperative Union (FDB), and was the idea of Professor Steen Eiler Rasmussen, the architect and city planner.

With his colleague and friend, Borge Mogensen, one of the most talented architects of the time, Wegner worked on this commission. They completed the commission successfully by creating furniture at affordable prices. Their partnership lasted a few years, but the friendship lasted for life. Borge Mogensen’s best-known chair from this time is model J 39, The Shaker Chair. Along with Wegner’s rocking chair (1944), these chairs remained in production for over 50 years.

In 1940, Wegner met Johannes Hansen, a furniture maker and chairman of the Guild. Hansen was an experienced furniture maker. He became an excellent partner of Wegner. For over a 25-year span, Wegner and Hansen set the standards at the exhibitions. Wegner and Hansen’s presence at the exhibitions helped gain recognition for Danish design; however it was more “like a game”, explains Wegner. “We had to have something novel to display every autumn. I drew it, and Johannes Hansen made it. We were happy if we could just sell the chairs we had made for the exhibition. That was as far as our hopes went.” Receiving no payment for the development work, the designers received a royalty on sales. If the designs were successful, the architects and manufacturers were able to enjoy the success financially.

Their opportunity for success came after the war. “It was a wonderful relief, a jubilant sense, that the war was over. We felt the whole world lay open to us, and we wanted to show what we could do”, explains Wegner. “Our aim was to make things as simple and genuine as possible, to show what we could create with our hands, and to try to make wood come alive, to give it spirit and vitality, and to get things to be so natural that they could only have been made by us.”
The turning point for Hans J. Wegner was when U.S.-based Interiors magazine placed The Round Chair, introduced in 1949, on its cover. Interiors heralded The Round Chair as the world’s most beautiful chair.

This publicity was a breakthrough for Wegner and Danish design. It opened doors for export opportunities. With this excellent publicity, a club in Chicago ordered 400 copies of The Chair, as it was referred to in the United States. Johannes Hansen stated that their workshop could not make 400 chairs and declined the order. However, the club would not be turned down, and the 400 chairs were delivered a few years later.

The Lunning Prize was awarded to Wegner in 1951. Frederik Lunning, owner of the Georg Jensen boutique in New York, created this major Scandinavian award. It was the first of many international awards that would be received by Wegner. Fame and exports went together. Wegner was at the top of his profession. His furniture designs manufactured by Johannes Hansen were successful, but also specific designs were manufactured by more industrial companies such as Fritz Hansen and the five companies - Andreas Tuck, Getama, A P Stolen, Carl Hansen & Søn, and Ry Møbler - that formed a joint export organization called Salesco. Salesco met with much success.

Master carpenter, Ejnar Pedersen, managed his family business that produced the components for Wegner’s furniture. In 1969, it launched its own production of some of Wegner’s designs under the name of PP Møbler. The company is now the largest manufacturer of Wegner’s joinery-type furniture, while Carl Hansen & Søn remains the largest manufacturer of his more industrial-type furniture designs.

DANISH DESIGN. Danish design promoted a sincere interest in the interaction between users and their tools and a more organic understanding of form. Design should appeal to all senses not just visible. The first decades after World War II were the most fruitful period ever for Danish Design. Many Danish designers achieved world fame along with Hans J. Wegner including Finn Juhl, Arne Jacobsen, Borge Mogensen, and later Poul Kjaerholm and Verner Panton.

Hans J. Wegner was the carpenter who conceived of the design on the basis of how a creative craftsman with good practical sense would go about the task. Wegner himself described it in an interview with Henrik Sten Møller as “a competition, so much to do, quality to live up to, and personal competition between, among others, Borge Mogensen, Finn Juhl, and me.” But as Henrik Sten Møller wrote many years later, “I would venture to say that Hans J. Wegner is the most gifted cabinetmaker the world has ever known.”

Over the years, Wegner stated that many foreigners have asked him how they made the Danish style. Wegner answered, “It was really nothing of the sort. It was rather a continuous process of purification, and for me of simplification, to cut down to the simplest possible elements of four legs, a seat and combined top rail and armrest.” Wegner along with his colleagues simplified the design process and created a world-renown style.


Poul Kjaerholm (1929-1980) designed modern functionalist furniture that was praised for its understated elegance and clean lines. He studied at the School of Arts and Crafts in Copenhagen where he would later teach, from 1952-56. He went on to become a lecturer and professor in the furniture and interior design department at the Academy of Art from 1957-76. Although he was formally trained as a cabinetmaker, Kjaerholm was a strong proponent for industrial production, and his work stands out among that of his Danish contemporaries because of his extensive use of steel frames rather than the traditional wood. He did, however, design many of his seats in natural materials like cane, canvas, leather and rope.

Inspired by Bauhaus design, Kjaerholm worked for several years manipulating the form of his chromed steel and leather chair that won the Grand Prix at the Milan Triennial in 1957. It appeared first in 1951 with an external frame, subtle armrests and a halyard seat and back and later evolved into the popular "PK 22". Throughout the fifties he designed several other versions, one with a functional woven cane seat that would gently bend to the pressures of the body to give a soft support, and employed the technique of padding the cane around the edges of the frame to make it more comfortable. The most successful incarnation of the chair, in leather, possessed an unadorned elegance that made him an international name. A 1967 chair was loosely based on this design, although it used the spring quality of the steel to create a more elaborate curved base that seemed to float the seat above it from the arm rests.

Kjaerholm is also known for the "PK 41" folding stool in stretched leather and his “PK 24” deck chair. This work has an upholstered headrest and tilts the legs up on the gently sloped woven cane seat. One of his last pieces was the 1976 "Louisiana" chair for the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art near Copenhagen, which was made with and without arm rests and was produced in a wide woven maple.

Kjaerholm designed mainly for Fritz Hansen and E. Kold Christensen Ltd. Unlike many other Danish designers from the period, his work appeared at very few of the Copenhagen Cabinetmaker's Guild Exhibitions because he was working with newer materials. Although he maintained a close relationship with natural woods and traditional processes, his work was geared more towards mass production and the energy of the modern movement. Kjaerholm was awarded the Lunning Prize in 1958 and worked as an exhibition designer in Denmark and abroad. The Mobilia Press wrote of him, "when Poul Kjaerholm's furniture is evaluated today, it is not by virtue of its quantity, but of its supremacy."