Finn Juhl
Copenhagen's cabinetmakers' guild was not kind to Finn Juhl's Pelican Chair when it appeared in 1940 ā critics thought its heavy, rounded forms looked more like an animal than a chair. Juhl, who had never trained as a cabinetmaker, was doing exactly what he intended: designing furniture like a sculptor, not a joiner.
An architect by training, not a craftsman, Juhl brought an outsider's eye to furniture ā shaping seats that seemed to hover above their own frames. Morentz presents a selection of his work, from the sculptural Pelican and Chieftain chairs to the interiors that introduced Danish Modern to America.
The architect who never trained as a cabinetmaker
Juhl originally wanted to become an art historian; his father refused to allow it, so he enrolled instead in the architecture department of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. In 1934, still a student, he joined architect Vilhelm Lauritzen's office, where he worked on major projects including Copenhagen Airport and Denmark's Radio House ā work that absorbed so much of his time he never finished his degree, and he later described himself as self-taught in furniture.
Without formal training in joinery ā unusual among Danish designers of his generation ā Juhl measured his own body to determine proportions and worked out how each part of a chair should carry weight, then handed the technical realisation to master cabinetmaker Niels Vodder. It was Vodder's craftsmanship that made Juhl's boldest ideas ā a seat visually separated from its frame, appearing to float ā physically possible.
From a Copenhagen guild exhibition to the United Nations
Juhl's early furniture for the Cabinetmakers' Guild exhibitions was fully upholstered, by his own account because he knew too little about construction to expose it; as his confidence with wood grew, he began separating upholstered surfaces from visible frame, arriving at the floating, self-explanatory construction of the 45 Chair ā later acquired by MoMA and awarded gold at the 1951 Milan Triennale.
His international reputation was cemented in 1951ā52, when he designed the interior of the Trusteeship Council Chamber at the United Nations Headquarters in New York ā a commission that helped ignite America's postwar fascination with Scandinavian design, and one still in use today.
I am fascinated by shapes that defy gravity and create a sense of visual lightness.