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Danish furniture designer (1914–2007)

Hans Jørgensen Wegner (April 2, 1914 – January 26, 2007) was a Danish furniture designer. His work, along with a concerted effort from several of his manufacturers, contributed to the international popularity of mid century Danish design. His style is often described as Organic Functionality, a modernist school with emphasis on functionality. This school of thought arose primarily in Scandinavian countries with contributions by Poul Henningsen, Alvar Aalto, and Arne Jacobsen. Wegner has been referred to as the "King of Chairs" for his proliferated work designing seating. In his lifetime he designed over 500 different chairs, over 100 of which were put into mass production and many of which have become recognizable design icons. Quote2|“If only you could design just one good chair in your life but you simply cannot.” In 1969, he was made honorary Royal designer for industry by the Royal Society of Arts in London.

Wegner was born to cobbler Peter Mathiesen Wegner and Nicoline Lausen on Smedegade 12 in Tønder. At an early age, Wegner shown interest in craft and could draw and create paper cuttings before he learned to walk. At home, Wegner was drawn to woodcarving and created wood sculptures based on Royal Copenhagen figurines he saw at the Tønder Museum. At the age of 14, he worked as a child apprentice to master cabinetmaker H. F. Stahlberg. He soon discovered he had a feeling for wood and developed an affinity towards the material. At the age of 15, he made his first chair. Finishing his apprenticeship at 17, he crafted a lady's desk as part of his journeyman's test and remained employed in the workshop before joining the army. During the army, he first saw the exhibition of the Copenhagen Cabinetmakers' Guild in 1935. The exhibits were a laboratory for experimentation between Master Cabinetmakers (such as Johannes Hansen, L. Pontoppidan, Niels Vodder, Jacob Kjær, and A. J. Iversen) and the best architects of the time (such as Kaare Klint, Vilhelm Lauritzen, and Ole Wanscher). These exhibits gave Wegner a first hand experience of what the combination of workmanship and design could produce. Wegner decided to become a designer with the aim of producing and selling his furniture. Wegner realized his skills needed improvement if he wished to fulfill his dream of opening his own workshop. After the military, Wegner took a 2.5 month cabinetmaking course at the Danish Technological Institute. Subsequently, he attended the School of Arts and Crafts' carpentry program located within the Danish Museum of Art & Design in Copenhagen. However, World War II caused delays in the City Hall project and he was first assigned to work on the Nyborg Bibliotek [da] under Møller and Flemming Lassen. as well as a website dedicated to the historic design. While the library was well received and Møller and Lassen were awarded the Eckersberg Medal, Wegner's contributions weren't as widely publicized at the time. From 1939 1942, Wegner worked on the Aarhus City Hall project and was responsible for all the furnishings. Wegner began working on three lines of modular office furniture for Planmøbler while working on the City Hall. Some of the Planmøbler furniture was used in the office wings of the City Hall. In 1940, Wegner made what could be called the two most pivotal relationships in his life. The first one was a personal relationship. He met Inga Helbo, a secretary in Jacobsen's office, and they were married on November 9, 1940. After finishing the Aarhus City Hall project, Wegner was unable to return to Copenhagen due to travel restrictions during Nazi occupation. Wegner never did return to school to complete the carpentry program and, as a result, he never received instruction from the "father of Danish modern furniture design" Kaare Klint (who taught the final part of the program). He designed for Mikael Laursen during this time. The chair and an accompanying table that Wegner later designed are still in production today under Carl Hansen & Søn. For Johannes Hansen's booth in the 1944 Cabinetmakers' Guild exhibition, Wegner created what might be considered his most decorative and most laborious piece: the Fish Cabinet. The exterior of the cabinet followed Kaare Klint's strict functional style with a rational geometric shape and little decorative elements. The interior, however, is an elaborate display of an underwater scene. Due to its technically demanding intarsia design, Johannes Hansen would not agree to produce the cabinet. Wegner decided to produce it himself using a pocket knife, which took three weeks to assemble all of the roughly 3,000 pieces of wood. Wegner would only complete a few items for FDB Møbler before he was recruited by one of FDB's subcontractors, Fritz Hansen. In 1947, Wegner designed the Peacock Chair for Johannes Hansen. Wegner began to experiment with molded plywood in 1948. Plywood had become popularized as a furniture material by the Eames and Alvar Alto and many designers were drawn to use this new lamination technology. That year, he submitted designs for a plywood chair in the MoMA's International Competition for Low Cost Furniture Design. His first shell chair (FH1936) as well as a bench version (FH1935) went into production for Fritz Hansen that same year. Wegner's two most notable works, the Round Chair and the Wishbone chair, both came in 1949. The Danish press that attended the event initially paid attention to the tripartite chair. While the tripartite chair had captured the attention of the Danish press, American journalists attended the event for the first time and were drawn to the Round Chair. The American journalists shared the news of this chair back home and it became was the subject of much attention internationally. The American magazine Interiors featured the chair in their piece on the event and christened it “most beautiful chair in the world.” This was the first coverage of Danish Modern in the American press. While all the chairs went into production the following year, the Wishbone Chair became his greatest commercial success and has remained in continuous production. In 1951, Ejvind Kold Kristensen created Salesco A/S, a company that exclusively promoted Wegner's work both domestically and abroad. Seeing the large potential for commercial success abroad, Salesco was a partnership between five of Wegner's preferred manufacturers, each with their own specialty, that would benefit from the shared marketing and sales resources to bring Wegner's works to more customers. The five manufacturers were Ry Møbler made bookcases, desks, and bulky items; A. P. Stolen made large upholstered furniture; Getama made furniture with loose cushions; Andreas Tuck made tables; and Carl Hansen & Søn made chairs. The company would allow Wegner to produce works across many factories at mass production and not be dependent on annual exhibits to market his works. With this centralized business, international purchasers only needed to visit a single showroom on Rygårds Alle in Copenhagen to see all of Wegner's Salesco collection. This organization made in possible for Wegner's work to proliferate without the designer having to worry about the production and export networks. In 1951, Wegner won the inaugural Lunning Prize along with Finnish designer Tapio Wirkkala. The prize money allowed Wegner and his wife to take a three month study tour to the United States and Mexico. The couple took the trip in 1953 after their two daughters were old enough to stay with their grandparents. Wegner witnessed the industrialized furniture production of the US but preferred to adhere to Denmark's traditional methods and rejected multiple offers, including one from Raymond Loewy, to move his furniture production to the US. Wegner stayed with Edgar Kaufmann Jr. at Fallingwater during the trip. In 1959, Frederik Lunning hosted a retrospective of Wegner's work at Georg Jensen in New York. Ten years after its initial release, the Round Chair became the subject to even greater attention and more accolades when chosen for the seating of the first televised U. S. presidential debate between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy on September 26, 1960. From 1962 1963, Wegner works with architects Allan Jessen and Arne Karlsen on designing his family home and design studio in Gentofte.

US imports of Wegner's furniture declined in the late 1960s due to an ill fated deal with Georg Jensen, Inc (the New York agency for Georg Jensen and a premier retailer for Danish home goods). In this agreement, Salesco gave Georg Jensen exclusive distribution rights within the United States. Georg Jensen added a hefty premium on all of Wegner's furniture which frustrated interior designers who balked at paying 3 4 times the retail prices in Denmark. When Georg Jensen shuttered in 1968, the US was left without a distributor for Salesco's five manufacturers. Johannes Hansen was not a member of the organization and was unaffected by this. The issues with the Georg Jensen deal were happening in the backdrop of a much larger and looming issue facing Danish furniture imports. In the late 1960s through the 1990s, Danish furniture suffered from an exhausted international market, a surge in low quality furniture from Denmark that lessened its allure, and rampant plagiarism from abroad. The Newer trends like bean bags, Eero Aarnio's Ball Chair from Finland, and the Memphis Group's colorful furniture from Italy were now seen as more appealing. In addition to changes in style preferences, customers' shopping habits had changed to favor affordable and lower cost furniture over a single investment that would last their lifetime. In 1969, the Knoll furniture company acquired the U. S. distribution rights for the Wegner designs manufactured by Johannes Hansen in Copenhagen. The collection included over a dozen chairs and a cabinet design. A New York Times article noted "[Danish furniture] went out of style. [ ] After being widely acclaimed and acquired, it was copied and cheapened and then replaced by those whose business is marketable novelty and change." The furniture industry in Denmark suffered greatly. The Cabinetmakers' Guild Exhibition, which Wegner presented new designed with Johannes Hansen, held its final event in 1966 after too few cabinetmakers remained in Copenhagen to sustain it. Wegner's furniture manufacturers fared better than others during this time but many eventually closed down: Andreas Tuck closed in 1972, A. P. Stolen went bankrupt in 1974, and Johannes Hansen would close in the 1990s. Wegner gave the Salesco board of directors an ultimatum: choose him or Foss Pedersen. Salesco chose Foss Pedersen due to a very large severance package in his contract. In 1969, he urged the company to produce under its own brand name

In the late 1990s, Danish modern and the broader Mid century modern movement experienced a revival in international interest. Wegner, like many designers of the period, saw a surge of renewed interest in their work. Wegner's furniture was now in such demand that he was cited as "the man of the hour in a hot collecting market" in a 1998 New York Times article.

As Wegner got older, his health started declining and he withdrew from work. Wegner retired in 1993 and his daughter Marianne took over his studio. He was placed in a nursing home in 2001 and started using a wheelchair. Wegner gifted 36 chairs for display on the exhibit which he felt comprised his best work. On January 26, 2007, Wegner passed away at the age of 92. In Wegner's own lifetime he was able to witness a surge of renewed interest in his work. To mark the 100 year anniversary of Wegner's birth in 2014, a series of events took place to commemorate the artist. Designmuseum Danmark opened the Just One Good Chair exhibition to showcase a retrospective of Wegner's work, as well as published an accompanying book in English, Danish, and German. The Art Museum in Tønder put on the "Hans J Wegner: A Nordic Design Icon from Tønder" exhibition, with an accompanying book of the same name in Danish and English. The Art Museum in Tønder also released Hans, His Chairs and The World, a children’s book about Wegner's life. Post Danmark issued a commemorative stamp. A number of Wegner's furniture was put into production in 2014 to mark Wegner's 100th birthday. PP Møbler released the Upholstered Peacock Chair (PP550) and Hammock Chair (PP135) and put the Tub Chair (PP530) into production for the first time. Carl Hansen & Søn released the CH88 chair and CH825 credenza. Art Museum in Tønder and Tønder Municipality created the Wegner Prize in 2015 to recognize designers or institutions that have contributed to Wegner's memory or the development of Nordic design. Winners of the prize include Noritsugu Oda, Aarhus City Hall, Cabinetmakers’ Autumn Exhibition, and PP Møbler, Getama, and Carl Hansen & Søn. In February 2020, a group formed the Association for the establishment of a Museum for Hans J. Wegner (Danish: Foreningen til etablering af et museum for Hans J. Wegners møbelkunst) to explore creating an entire museum dedicated to Wegner in Tønder. The association plans to spend up to three years investigating the feasibility and seeking grants to bring the idea to life. Wegner's family has been supportive and offered up items from his design studio to display at the museum.

Almost all of Wegner's creations are made of wood. Having worked with wood from an early age and being trained as a cabinetmaker, the designer was very attached to this material. In addition to wood, Wegner also utilized other traditional construction materials like upholstery, caning, and paper cord. His style is known for taking traditional elements and pushing them to extreme tolerances and distillations. Unlike his contemporaries, Wegner did not focus on materials like fiberglass and plastics (Verner Panton), steel (Poul Kjaerholm), or polyurethane foam (Arne Jacobsen). While Wegner preferred wood, he occasionally designed chairs that would not be possible with wood. For the Circle Chair (PP130), Wegner originally designed it with a steel ring because such a method for making the large ring from wood wasn't available in 1965, however, when it was finally put into production in 1985, PP Møbler was able to make it entirely from wood.

Wegner often drew upon his own designs to create new chairs. Many of Wegner's chairs borrow characteristics from his prior works. The danish art critic Henrik Sten Møller named his 1979 book on Wegner Tema Med Variationer (English: Variations on a theme) after Wegner's tendency to return to earlier works and evolve them. The Chinese Chair was created in 4 different versions. Later, the Wishbone Chair was based on the early Chinese Chair series. In the Peacock chair, the connection of the legs to the seat is accentuated by the use of a darker wood wedge in the mortise and tenon joint. These features emphasize the process involved in bringing the furniture together and help inform the user of the craftsmanship employed in his work.

In addition to an adherence to traditional craftsmanship, many of Wegner's pieces also paid homage to historical and traditional chairs. This can be seen in Peacock Chair which is based on a classic windsor chair and the Chinese Chair series which was inspired by Ming dynasty chair design. Wegner described his approach as "stripping the old chairs of their outer style and letting them appear in their pure construction."