Fritz Hansen’s pantheon of mid-century Nordic design

0

Egg, Ant, Drop: though the names of Arne Jacobsen’s chairs are diminutive, they belong to some of the most recognisable shapes in 20th-century furniture. Yet Fritz Hansen, the company that first produced them — and still does today — is not a household name outside its native Denmark, despite a back catalogue that resembles the pantheon of mid-century modern Nordic design.

The company is 150 years old this year. In 1872, its founder, a cabinetmaker, moved from the south of Denmark to Copenhagen, aged 25. A decade and a half later he had a thriving workshop making ornate furniture in the Christianshavn district, now home to advertising agencies and warehouse apartments. When Hansen died in 1902, the business, employing 50 people, passed to his son Christian and, in the 1930s, to his grandsons Poul Fritz and Søren.

As head of product development, Søren Hansen contracted designers who would become major names, including Børge Mogensen and Hans J Wegner. But the company’s fortunes were transformed by his association with Jacobsen. Michael Sheridan, who writes about Danish design, says the architect and the furniture maker were well matched in their perfectionism: “Søren Hansen supported Arne Jacobsen in his quest for the ultimate intersection of technology, aesthetics and comfort.”

Taking advantage of the company’s investment in wood-bending machinery to compete with German-Austrian manufacturer Thonet in the 1930s, Jacobsen created a sequence of stacking chairs with steam-moulded plywood seats and backs and delicate steel legs. They included the Ant and Grand Prix but peaked in 1955 with the triangular-backed Series 7, still Fritz Hansen’s best-selling model.

The Series 7 stacking chair in production, 1957
The Series 7 stacking chair in production, 1957

The Egg chair, 1963
The Egg chair, 1963

Through the second half of the century, the company worked with designers such as Verner Panton and Vico Magistretti, mostly on contract furniture for offices, hotels and concert halls. In 2000 it launched a campaign to bring its own brand, rebadged as the Republic of Fritz Hansen, out of the shadows. But by the end of the last decade, earnings had fallen three years in a row. The company “needed to find the recipe to become more relevant again”, says chief executive Josef Kaiser.

Kaiser was recruited from the Swiss furniture company Vitra in 2019 as part of an overhaul that included Fritz Hansen’s lighting and accessories offshoots being brought under the main brand and the Republic badge being retired. Now, the residential business accounts for about 75 per cent of sales, says Kaiser. “I would love to have it more balanced,” he says, adding that business contracts lead to more feedback from architects, which inspires new ideas.

Marie-Louise Høstbo, Fritz Hansen’s head of design, agrees, pointing out that the company would not have sold thousands of Egg chairs if it had not first worked with Jacobsen to create the handful he designed for the SAS Hotel in Copenhagen. The hotel — where Jacobsen conceived the shape of everything from the room keys to the building itself — also gave birth to the Swan and Drop chairs. “That’s my dream, working with architects for specific projects,” says Høstbo.

The company has opened new showrooms in Tokyo and Shanghai. But on the product side, Kaiser says his recipe for relevance may involve a scaling down in the short term, with fewer launches. Høstbo works with contemporary designers, including Cecilie Manz, Jaime Hayon and studio Nendo, on tables, chairs and lamps that harmonise with the brand’s bestsellers.

Series 7 chair
Series 7 is still a Fritz Hansen bestseller

In the archive there is a one-off chair made in the 1870s by Fritz Hansen for his own use. Its spare, proto-Modernist form and curved birch laminate back have the same confluence of simplicity, style and comfort that found its zenith in Jacobsen’s furniture. To Høstbo, the chair, named FH1, is the stem cell of the company’s design values. “We don’t collaborate with any designers without showing it to them,” she says.

The company is also reissuing selected pieces from its archive. A vast basement under its offices contains a crated example of almost every design Fritz Hansen has produced. The pieces unearthed to celebrate the 150th anniversary include a previously unissued table designed by Poul Kjærholm — another Danish mid-century titan — and others given a contemporary tweak, such as Jacobsen’s chairs covered in speckled fabrics by Belgian designer Raf Simons for Kvadrat.

Since 1965 the company has been headquartered in Allerød, north-west of Copenhagen, where in the 1890s its founder bought a parcel of forest land and built a sawmill at its edge. Most of the production was moved to Poland eight years ago, but part of the Allerød site remains dedicated to hand-finishing and assembling Kjærholm’s tables and chairs. The cane back and seat for the PK22 chair is still hand-woven on to its matt stainless steel frame by outworkers on the tiny Danish island of Endelave (population 185).

A chair designed by Fritz Hensen in the 1870s
A chair designed by Fritz Hensen in the 1870s © Strüwing

For every Series 7 chair Fritz Hansen produces, it estimates that 100 unlicensed, cheaper knock-offs are churned out in anonymous factories. “I hate the copies,” says Kaiser. The company chases down counterfeit manufacturers wherever possible, he says, but also tries to educate customers. “If we find copies at a hotel we inform them that this might not be the right image for the hotel chain. We usually have a positive outcome.”

The Hansen family sold up in 1979, and the holding company, Skandinavisk, is owned by two charitable foundations. Licences from the rights holders of its best-selling designs are secure; the contract with Jacobsen’s foundation extends to around 2070, says Kaiser.

To mark the anniversary, the Allerød complex is being revamped, with an enlarged visitor space that will see more of those chairs in the basement brought into the light. The work will be complete by the 150th birthday — October 24 — and Kaiser says Allerød is likely to host a celebration for worldwide employees. “We will have a really good party,” he says. “And we have some nice surprises for our people. But I don’t want them to read about them in the newspaper!”

Anniversary presents: reissues from the archives

Fritz Hansen has produced a range of pieces and variants from its archive to mark its 150th anniversary.

PK61 table One of Poul Kjærholm’s minimal masterpieces reissued in Norwegian Fauske marble.


Kjærholm PK0 chair and PK60 table Unusual exceptions to Kjærholm’s mostly steel oeuvre. Rejected for production in 1952 because Fritz Hansen was busy with production of the Ant chair.


Swan chair One of Arne Jacobsen’s designs for the SAS Hotel in Copenhagen. Its cradling form, like cyclamen petals, is now issued in chestnut leather along with the Egg, Lily and Series 7 chairs.

Follow @FTProperty on Twitter or @ft_houseandhome on Instagram to find out about our latest stories first

Stay connected with us on social media platform for instant update click here to join our  Twitter, & Facebook

We are now on Telegram. Click here to join our channel (@TechiUpdate) and stay updated with the latest Technology headlines.

For all the latest Art-Culture News Click Here 

Read original article here

Denial of responsibility! Rapidtelecast.com is an automatic aggregator around the global media. All the content are available free on Internet. We have just arranged it in one platform for educational purpose only. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, all materials to their authors. If you are the owner of the content and do not want us to publish your materials on our website, please contact us by email – [email protected]. The content will be deleted within 24 hours.
Leave a comment