Hans J. Wegner
Master of the chair.
Hans J. Wegner designed more than 500 chairs. The Chair was used in the 1960 television debate between Kennedy and Nixon.
Hans J. Wegner was born in 1914 in Tønder in southern Denmark, the son of a shoemaker. He was apprenticed to a cabinetmaker and qualified as a journeyman at just seventeen. He then studied at the School of Arts and Crafts in Copenhagen. Craftsmanship became the foundation of all his work.
In the early 1940s he worked on the furniture for the new Aarhus City Hall, designed by Arne Jacobsen and Erik Møller. He also began a long collaboration with the master cabinetmaker Johannes Hansen. The China Chair of 1944 was inspired by Chinese chairs of the Ming dynasty. The Peacock Chair of 1947 has a fan-shaped back of spindles.
In 1949 came the Round Chair, known in the United States simply as The Chair. It was used in the first televised presidential debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960, which made it world-famous. In 1949 he also designed the Y Chair, also known as the Wishbone Chair, for Carl Hansen & Søn. It has a curved back rail and a seat of woven paper cord and has sold in great numbers. Other well-known models are the Papa Bear armchair and the sculptural Shell Chair.
Wegner designed more than 500 chairs. He often worked in oak and teak and let the joints and forms of the wood become part of the design. His chairs combine simplicity, comfort and technical refinement, and he wanted the back to be as beautiful as the front. In 1951 he received the first Lunning Prize, an important Nordic design award.
Wegner died in 2007. Many of his chairs are still in production and can be found in museums such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He is regarded as one of the most important figures of the golden age of Danish furniture design.