Finn Juhl and Danish Chairs
Gallery Talk by ODA Noritsugu x TATARA Keita

ODA Noritsugu (Professor Emeritus, Tokai University)
TATARA Keita (Assistant Professor, Kyoto Institute of Technology)
KOBAYASHI Akiko (Curator, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum)

KOBAYASHI Akiko 0:14
The Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum is currently holding “Finn Juhl andDanish Chairs,” a special exhibition examining the history and fascinationof Danish furniture design with a focus on Danish architect and furniture
designer Finn Juhl. The exhibition is organized into three sections. Chapter
1 starts with modernism’s arrival in Denmark and traces Danish furniture
design’s development through examples of chairs of Danish design’s
golden age from the 1940s to ‘60s.
Chapter 2 looks at Finn Juhl’s career and works. Featured are his mostrepresentative chairs, including his Easy Chair No. 45 and Chieftain Chair.
This chapter also examines Juhl’s interior design and architectural workthrough drawings and photographic materials.
Chapter 3, “Experiencing Danish Design,” is an exhibit allowing visitors toactually sit in chairs and experience their designs. The chairs are from theOda Collection, a collection of chairs gathered by chair researcher ODA
Noritsugu as reference materials. We have invited Prof. Oda, who also
provided academic cooperation, and TATARA Keita, who provided
academic cooperation and handled the venue’s design, to speak
concerning Finn Juhl and Danish furniture design.

TATARA Keita 2:02
The chair you are now sitting in, Prof. Oda, is “The Chair.” The chair I am
sitting in is “Y Chair CH24.” These two chairs bear a strong connection, Ibelieve.
ODA Noritsugu 2:20

This chair’s roots lie in a chair created in Ming Dynasty China. Hans Wegner
repeatedly redesigned stylized chairs of the past and produced large
numbers of variations. Such was a facet of his work as a designer. TheChair was released in 1949 and displayed in the autumn 1949
Cabinetmakers’ Guild Exhibition. In the following year, 1950, it appeared
in a feature article on the exhibition published in the February edition ofa magazine. With this, The Chair became a sensation in the US overnight,
and Johannes Hansen Co. received a large number of orders from America.
The first order was for 300 chairs, I have heard. Johannes Hansen initiallyrefused this order because the chairs were not made so easily. But theAmerican company ordering them said they would wait several months, soplease make them, and they were finally delivered.
So, this chair was 1949, and the Y-Chair you are now sitting in was issued
in 1950 as a new design easier for ordinary people to obtain. This Y-Chairis 90 percent machine fabricated. The remaining 10 percent was handassembly of parts and attachment of the paper cord. As such, while almost
entirely machine made, the Y-Chair also has a hand-crafted mood andsplendidly expresses Hans Wegner’s perspective both as a craftsman andas a designer.
TATARA 4:29
Arrayed behind us are famed chairs designed from the 1940s to early 1960s,
the so-called golden age of Danish modern furniture design. How would
you position Finn Juhl as a designer with regard to these works?
ODA 4:50
Well, the chairs arrayed here represent the Klint school. All are by
students of Kaare Klint, who is considered the father of modern Danishfurniture design. The chairs here, in other words, are works representing
the mainstream of Danish furniture design. Finn Juhl, in contrast with suchdesigners, was a furniture designer with no cabinetmaker skills. The
designers representing the mainstream all became cabinetmakers after
obtaining the qualification of a Meister. In other words, the furniture
designers were all craftsmen involved in making the chairs. Finn Juhl did
not fit this mold.

TATARA 5:40
For people in those times, the chairs Finn Juhl created were highly novel
in design, we can say.
ODA 5:46
Yes, up until the mid-1940s, Finn Juhl’s works displayed forms neverbefore seen and compositions that defied convention. Still, almost noneof the works he displayed at the Cabinetmakers’ Guild Exhibition sold. TheGrasshopper Chair is an example: two chairs were exhibited but neither
sold, so he had to purchase them himself. And yet, just a few years ago,the chairs were auctioned at a price of 4 hundred million yen, so there is
this aspect that the world is now finally catching up.
TATARA 6:35
In passing, concerning the Y-Chair I am now sitting in, I have heard thatFinn Juhl also designed a work very similar to this Y-Chair.
ODA 6:48
Wegner’s Y-Chair was released in 1950. Compositionally, it resembles anarmchair that Finn Juhl designed in the early 1940s. Quite a fierce
argument arose between the two as a result, I have heard. Thereafter,
Finn Juhl did not display his own armchairs outside often. He kept one inhis home office and another he parked in a corner in Niels Vodder’s studio.
Finn Juhl visited the studio about once a week, and there’s an interesting
story from that time. Despite not being a qualified Meister and lackingskills, he took a plane to a chair and planed too much off, so a craftsman
afterwards had to fill it in and apply coating over it.
TATARA 7:56
The vivid image we have of Finn Juhl was established in the 1940s, but it
gradually faded in later decades. Particularly as concerns his models
designed on a premise of mass production, some pieces from his later
years make you wonder if they are actually by Finn Juhl. So, there is this
aspect of him facing considerable difficulty in later years.
ODA 8:26

Yes. Efforts to explore possibilities for larger scale production, fromaround the late 1950s, had an unavoidable tendency to favor straight line
designs, particularly with furniture mass produced by France & Son. Suchdesigns turned the people who loved Finn Juhl’s furniture away from hiswork. Subsequently, he faced the quandary of being unable to surpass theworks he had designed in the past. From the late 1960s into the 1970s, heexperienced a terribly hard period when almost no work of any kind cameto him.
TATARA 9:49
In each period of Finn Juhl’s career, his partner in producing furniturechanged. His foremost works were created in the 1940s to mid-1950s when
he was with Niels Vodder, I believe.
ODA 10:08
In that period, Finn Juhl was striving to create work highly unique incomposition and form, but there were few snedkermester (mastercabinetmakers) who could realize those designs. At this time, theextremely challenge-oriented master cabinetmaker Niels Vodder took on
his designs with him. Truly, if Vodder had not been there to collaborate,Finn Juhl’s furniture designs may never have seen the light of day. It makes
you wonder, so important was Vodder to Juhl in this way.
TATARA 10:58
The Cabinetmakers’ Guild Exhibition was an important place for displaying
one’s creations, not only for Finn Juhl but generally for modern furniture
designers and architects, and not only designers and architects but makers
of all kinds. In the beginning, designers and architects did not intervenemuch in that exhibition, it being a show for cabinetmakers, that is,
furniture craftsmen, displaying works designed by the cabinetmakers
themselves. Suddenly, Finn Juhl’s Pelican Chair and Poet Sofa, works
fabricated by Niels Vodder, appeared in that exhibition and made a terrificimpact. But they were not accepted at first, right?
ODA 11:57
As you say, their appearance made an extremely large impact, yet, at thesame time, there was almost no one who supported or bought such works,
or sought to commercialize and mass produce them because of their highappraisal. It was actually from 1945 that such works became mass
produced. From 1937 until about 1945, when almost no buyers appeared
and they had little support, Niels Vodder remained closely partnered with
Finn Juhl during what was actually quite a hard time.
TATARA 12:53
The chair you are sitting in now is an early Finn Juhl work, the PelicanChair. This chair, which was completely unprecedented and even now looks
innovative and new, appeared in an exhibition venue displaying classicaland even traditional works. Finn Juhl took his drawings for this chair toNiels Vodder, whose eagerness to create such a chair, not to mention histechnical skill, had enormous value for Juhl.
Finn Juhl was similarly flexible in his thinking. In the 1950s, besides sales
in Denmark, he also exported actively to the US. For exporting to the US,
what is called knock-down or ready to assemble furniture was needed. Themakers, I believe, sought out designs for such furniture from each designer.
In the 1940s, nevertheless, the chairs designed by Juhl in the true Finn
Juhl style and created by Niels Vodder were extremely difficult to mass
produce.
ODA 14:17
Still, the American market was huge. At the time, I met a certain Americanof Danish ancestry who had a company that was importing and selling
Danish furniture by Finn Juhl and other designers. Hearing what he had tosay was surprising. Every week a 40-foot container arrived, and a week
later, it would all be sold. As such, week after week, he was importing 40
feet of furniture. Finn Juhl, in particular, had become quite active
internationally, so the American market was surely in his mind somewhere,
I think. So, he was giving Finn Juhl designs to Baker Furniture that did notexist in Denmark, you see.
TATARA 15:15
It was a huge development that Finn Juhl’s works, which had been difficult
to manufacture until then, came to be manufactured on a mass-production

basis in an American factory. Production methods were different in the USand Denmark, weren’t they?
ODA 15:42
In part, yes. The chairs used in the United Nations Trusteeship Council
Chamber are an example. The joint of the chair arm and rear leg was, ina sense, a rational joint. Meanwhile, the chair arm featured a wide, threedimensional curve. This latter aspect truly reflective of Danish furniture
was also introduced in the design.
TATARA 16:37
Most of the pieces in this exhibition were designed fifty or more years ago.
Why do such works remain acceptable for our way of life today? This issomething I often think about. Furniture, especially this kind of Danish
furniture, really strikes me as an unusual genre. Because it is mass
produced. Mass-produced products, especially industrial goods, are in
their most sellable circumstances the moment they debut in the market.
In most cases, however, demand gradually falls thereafter and sales
decrease. Yet, furniture like these chairs or even this table has not reallychanged very much, the fact notwithstanding that human beings havegrown a little taller in average. Furniture of 100 years ago, if sufficiently
well made, still fits our lifestyle today, and this is especially true of many
works of Danish furniture.
ODA 17:57
For young people who aim to become furniture designers, the question of
how to transcend that high, formidable wall posed by the masterworks ofpast masters is not easy. As such, right now in Denmark, the job offurniture designer is rated the least popular work. Still, in any pastmasterwork, you inevitably find a problem of some kind. And discoveringin what aspect that problem lies is the start, I think. The Chair, forexample, is regarded as the world’s highest level of chair, which is why ittakes the definite article “the.” But there is also a real problem with The
Chair: its high cost. Wegner himself was clearly aware of that problem. So,
not long after releasing The Chair, he designed a succession of chairs
better suited to machine production.

TATARA 19:21
In this age, trying to do the same thing is quite difficult, I think, becauseof how fast change occurs and the speed of things in the world. It istherefore very hard for today’s designers to transcend works of the pastin dealing with contemporary styles. But this means that Danish designers,
and we designers throughout the world, must persevere in our efforts
without giving up.
ODA 20:03
Certainly, the bar is extremely high for the development of products. As
you said, the greatest problem is that products have a short lifespan. Even
trial products can easily be produced using a 3D printer. Because things
are easily made, they are easily thrown away and forgotten. The lifespanof things is getting extremely short. This is the problem we face.
I don't use the word “consumer,” because I dislike it. The user has a
responsibility to ask if a product can be used for a long time, before
purchasing it. This is an extremely important factor now. When we buy“fast” products, they are easily thrown away, which leads toenvironmental destruction and waste of resources. However, as I
mentioned, something that has survived 50 or 60 years has an extremelylong lifespan and a timeless design.
TATARA 21:27
Danish furniture, furniture that has survived 50 or 60 years or in somecases even longer than that, will hold increasingly important meaning in
our lives in the future.
ODA 21:44
In fact, seeing this exhibition held at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum
has given me strong hope. Because there are so many young people here.
These young people will become aware of designs born more than half
century ago, and reappraise them and take deep interest in them.
As a result of Nordic people and German people—people of Northern
Europe—choosing to value their lifestyle and prioritize their way of life
even over jobs, so many wonderful masterpieces were created, pieces

arising from common ground. If young people subsequently ponder thisfact, this exhibition will have provided an incentive for thinking about thelow quality of our lifestyle in Japan, today, and working to elevate it, littleby little.
Translated from Japanese to English by Brian AMSTUTZ