![]() ![]() With assistance from his then-apprentice Verner Panton, Jacobsen designed the Ant chair for the cafeteria of a Danish healthcare company called Novo Nordisk. The Ant chair, however, was the breakthrough. The collaboration between the architect and Fritz Hansen officially originated in 1934 - that year, Jacobsen created his inaugural piece for the manufacturer, the solid beechwood Bellevue chair for a restaurant commission. (Wegner was moved by portraits he’d seen of Danish merchants in the Chinese chairs.)Įverything changed in 1952 with Arne Jacobsen’s Ant chair. Still, the most aesthetically striking piece Fritz Hansen produced in the first half of the 20th century was arguably the China chair of 1944 by Hans Wegner - and that piece, with its yoke-shaped bentwood back- and armrest, was based on seating manufactured in China during the Ming dynasty. In the next few decades, the company promoted simple, plain chairs with slatted backs and cane or rush seats designed by such proto- modernist masters as Kaare Klint and Søren Hansen. At the time, Fritz Hansen was best known for seating that featured curved legs and curlicue splats and referenced 18th-century Chippendale designs. In 1915, the firm became the first in Denmark to make chairs using steam-bent wood (a technique most familiar from birch used in the ubiquitous café chairs by Austrian maker Thonet). Yet thanks to the postwar innovations of Arne Jacobsen and others, Fritz Hansen would become the country’s leader in Scandinavian modern design using new, forward-looking materials and methods.įritz Hansen started his company in 1872, specializing in the manufacture of small furniture parts. When the Copenhagen-based furniture maker Fritz Hansen opened for business more than 140 years ago, the company - which today styles itself The Republic of Fritz Hansen - adhered to the traditional, time-honored Danish values of craftsmanship in woodworking and joinery. He also created a series of remarkable lighting designs, most notably his Fun chandeliers - introduced in 1964 and composed of scores of shimmering capiz-shell disks - and the Space Age VP Globe pendant light of 1969.Īs you will see from the offerings on 1stDibs, Verner Panton’s designs are made to stand out and put an eye-catching exclamation point on even the most modern decor. Panton would spend the latter 1960s and early ’70s developing all-encompassing room environments composed of sinuous and fluid-formed modular seating made of foam and metal wire. Three years later, he introduced the S model, the first legless chair crafted from a single piece of plywood, cantilevered on a round metal base. His curving, stackable 1960 Panton chair, his most popular design, was the first chair to be made from a single piece of molded plastic. Panton went on to successive bravura technical feats. Made of upholstered sheet metal and with a conical base in place of legs, the design shocked visitors to a Copenhagen furniture fair. His iconoclastic aesthetic was announced with his 1958 Cone chair, modified a year later as the Heart Cone chair. Panton opened his own design office in 1955, issuing tubular steel chairs with woven seating. Henningsen taught a scientific approach to design Jacobsen was forever researching new materials and Wegner, the leader in modern furniture design using traditional woodworking and joinery, encouraged experimental form. After graduating, in 1951, Panton worked in the architectural office of Arne Jacobsen, and he became a close friend of Hans Wegner's. ![]() ![]() This radical departure from classic Danish modernism, however, actually stemmed from his training under the greats of that design style.īorn on the largely rural Danish island of Funen, Panton studied architecture and engineering at Copenhagen’s Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, where the lighting designer Poul Henningsen was one of his teachers. And Panton’s ebullient Pop art sensibility made him an international design star of the 1960s and ’70s. He developed fantastical, futuristic forms and embraced bright colors and new materials such as plastic, fabric-covered polyurethane foam and steel-wire framing. Verner Panton introduced the word “groovy” - or at least its Danish equivalent - into the Scandinavian modern design lexicon. ![]()
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