This chair is unmarked, upholstery seems to be leather. The wood is stained, and the stain looks to be original (but, who knows-). As you can see the stain has worn off the armrests, showing the true color of the wood. My understanding is that the 48 chair was produced in Denmark & the US (Baker Furniture). Was it offered with a stained finish? Examples I've found online are (unstained) teak exclusively. Is the frame typically marked?Use your arrow keys to navigate between images and lots.Along with Hans Wegner, Arne Jacobsen and Børge Mogensen, Finn Juhl was one of the great masters of mid-20th-century Danish design. Juhl was the first among that group to have his work promoted overseas, bringing the character of the nation’s furnishings — and the inherent principles of grace, craftsmanship and utility on which they were based — to an international audience. A stylistic maverick, Juhl embraced expressive, free-flowing shapes in chair and sofa designs much earlier than his colleagues, yet even his quietest pieces incorporate supple, curving forms that are at once elegant and ergonomic.
As a young man, Juhl hoped to become an art historian, but his father steered him into a more practical course of study in architecture. He began designing furniture in the late 1930s, a discipline in which, despite his education, Juhl was self-taught, and quite proud of the fact. His earliest works, designed in the late 1930s, are perhaps his most idiosyncratic. The influence of contemporary art is clear in Juhl's 1939 “Pelican” chair: an almost Surrealist take on the classic wing chair. Critics reviled the piece, however; one said it looked like a "tired walrus." Juhl had tempered his creativity by 1945, when the Danish furniture-making firm Niels Vodder began to issue his designs. Yet his now-classic “NV 45” armchair still demonstrates panache, with a seat that floats above the chair’s teak frame. Juhl first exhibited his work in the United States in 1950, championed by Edgar Kaufmann Jr., an influential design critic and scion of America’s most prominent family of modern architecture and design patrons.
(Kaufmann’s father commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright’s design of the house “Fallingwater.”) Juhl quickly won a following for such signature designs as the supremely comfortable “Chieftan” lounge chair, the biomorphic “Baker” sofa, and the “Judas” table, a piece ornamented with stylish inlaid silver plaquettes. As you will see from the offerings on these pages, Finn Juhl’s furniture — as well as his lighting, ceramics, tableware and accessories — has an air of relaxed sophistication and elegance that is unique in the realm of mid-20th- century design.Finn Juhl (1912–1989) was the first Danish furniture designer to be recognized internationally. He studied architecture at the Royal Academy in Copenhagen and with Danish architect Vilhelm Lauritzen, but as a furniture designer he was self-taught, a fact he always emphasized. Juhl began designing furniture in the late 1930’s, in the beginning mostly pieces intended for himself, but after setting up his own office in 1945 he soon became known for his unusual, expressive and sculptural pieces.
He initiated a collaboration with master cabinetmaker Niels Vodder, and caused a stir at the annual Cabinetmaker’s Exhibition with designs clearly influenced by modern, abstract art. Compared to his contemporaries, Juhl placed more emphasis on form and less on function, a serious break with the tradition of the Klint School. Finn Juhl’s first American assignment came in 1951 when he was asked to design the interior of the Trusteeship Council Chamber at the UN headquarters in New York. An overwhelming task for a rather inexperienced, young architect, but Juhl gained much praise for his result. This first experience in America and the contacts made in connection with it, later proved valuable for many Danish architects, because it paved the way for the notion of ‘Danish Modern’ to become internationally known and valued. One of Finn Juhl’s most well-known pieces is the “Chieftain Chair”. Designed in 1949, it is a fine example of Juhl’s great idea of separating the sculpturally shaped seat and back from the wooden frame.
The same principle is evident in the “45-Chair”, designed in 1945. Here, emphasis is laid on the elegantly shaped armrests.04 of 18Oda’s house shares its grounds with various wild animals such as deer Finn Juhl (30 January 1912 – 17 May 1989) was a Danish architect, interior and industrial designer, most known for his furniture design. He was one of the leading figures in the creation of "Danish design" in the 1940s and he was the designer who introduced Danish Modern to America. Finn Juhl was born on 30 January 1912 to an authoritarian father who was a textile wholesaler representing several English, Scottish and Swiss textile manufacturers in Denmark, and a mother who died shortly after he was born. From an early age he wanted to become an art historian, already as a teenager spending much time at the National Gallery and in spite of his young age receiving permission to borrow books at the library of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, but his father disapproved his aspirations which he considered flimsy and convinced him instead to pursue a career in architecture.
[1] He was admitted to the Architecture School at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts where from 1930 to 1934 he studied under Kay Fisker, a leading architect of his day and noted lecturer. After graduating, Juhl worked for ten years at Vilhelm Lauritzen's architectural firm, where he had also apprenticed as a student. In close collaboration with Viggo Boesen, Lauritzen's closest, Juhl was responsible for much of the interior design of the national Danish broadcaster Danmarks Radio's Radio Building, one of the firm's most high-profile assignments during those years.[2] In 1943 he received the C.F. Hansen prize for young architects. Finn Juhl furniture at Design Museum Denmark In 1945 he left Vilhelm Lauritzen's company and set up his own design practice, in Nyhavn in Copenhagen, specializing in interior and furniture design. However, his work in furniture design began earlier than that. Juhl made his debut in 1937 when he commenced a collaboration with cabinetmaker Niels Vodder which would continue until 1959 and exhibited at the Cabinetmakers' Guild Exhibitions, the 11th of its kind.
Therefore, his early chairs were originally produced in small numbers, eighty at most, because the Guild-shows emphasized the work of the artisan over the burgeoning industry of mass production. However, they were almost all reissued later in his career. The Guild Exhibitions were an important venue for the young designers who sought to renew Danish design, turning their backs on the traditional historicist styles, heavy and with ornaments and plush, instead creating modern furniture which fitted the new trends in architecture. The projects was highly controversial and Juhl's first work met much criticism. His Pelican chair, designed in 1939 and first produced in 1940, was described as a "tired walrus" and "aesthetics in the worst possible sense of the word".[4] In spite of the initial criticism, Juhl's work began to influence the style of homes abroad throughout the 40s. In Denmark, however, his popularity did not reach that of his peers, Børge Mogensen and Hans Wegner, who were less radical in their designs and relied more on Kaare Klint, leader of the furniture school at the Academy and the nestor of modern Danish furniture design.
In 1948 Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., leader of the Department for Industrial Design at Merchandise Mart in New York, toured Scandinavia. He intentionally did not visit only the big Scandinavian exhibitions, but being impressed by Juhl's work he presented it in a large article in the Interiors magazine. In 1951 he participated in the Good Design exhibition in Chicago. In connection with the show he was quoted in Interiors for stating that "One cannot create happiness with beautiful objects, but one can spoil quite a lot of happiness with bad ones". The work he did for them—24 pieces including chairs, tables, storage units, sideboards and desks—represented his first successful marriage of modern mass production to his traditionally high craft standards. At the Milan Triennale in the 50s, he won a total of five gold medals, further adding to his international reputation. During this decade he continued to design more specifically for the mass market than had been the case in the 40s.
Juhl also designed refrigerators for General Electric, glassware, ceramics, a line of furniture for the Baker Furniture Company of Holland, Michigan, and was the interior designer for the United Nations Trusteeship Council Chamber in New York City. In the '60s and '70s he experienced a declining interest in his designs. In the '80s and '90s the interest resurged. In 2010 one of his sofas, produced by Danish furniture brand OneCollection, won a Wallpaper Design Award in the Best reissue/sofa design category[5] His work also included numerous assignments within the field of interior design. Shortly after opening his own office, he received several commissions to do interior design at some of the premier addresses in Copenhagen, Bing & Grøndahl's shop on Amagertorv (1946), now housing Royal Copenhagen, and Svend Schaumann's florist's shop on Kongens Nytorv (1948). In 1951–52 he designed the Trusteeship Council Chamber in the United Nations headquarters in New York City. He also collaborated regularly with companies such as Georg Jensen and Scandinavian Airlines, his work for the latter including both ticket offices and interiors of planes.
He also had many assignments as an exhibition designer. In 1942 Juhl designed a house for himself, today known simply as Finn Juhl's House, and had it built for money inherited from his father. Over the years it was increasingly furnished with creations of his own design. He married Inge-Marie Skaarups on 15 July 1937 but they later divorced. From 1961 he lived in a common-law marriage with Hanne Wilhelm Hansen,[6] a member of the family behind the Edition Wilhelm Hansen music publishing house. She survived him but after her death in May 2003 their home, which she had left unchanged after his death, was made into a historic house museum, today operated as part of the Ordrupgaard Art Museum whose premises it adjoins. Juhl was a teacher at the School of Interior Design in Copenhagen from 1945 to 1955. In 1965 he was a visiting professor at the Institute of Design. The "FJ" Sideboard from 1955 Juhl gave a soft edge to the lines of wooden modernist chairs, favouring organic shapes which often took the wood to the limits of what was possible.