FINN JUHL FINE FURNITURE

Transcription

1 FINN JUHL FINE FURNITURE

2 FINN JUHL, a Danish, international modernis t According to his worst critics, Finn Juhl saw life as a cocktail party. He was born into a well-off middle class family and was in many ways larger than life a man of the world, who provoked the traditional Danish furniture designers. As a young man, he dreamed of becoming an art historian. His thorough understanding of the international art scene of his time as well as older art history was central to his work. He became one of the greatest furniture artists of the 20th century. He always stressed that he was self-taught as a furniture designer, as he had trained as an architect a study he never had time to finish. He only designed a couple of holiday homes and one villa as an architect, but their layout was radically modern. His own home from 1942 is one of the first Danish villas to be designed from the inside out, the functionality of the rooms determine the external design and one of the first houses where the rooms flow seamlessly from one to the next. Nonetheless it is the interior design, the furniture and his holistic attitude to interior design, which Juhl has become famous for. Although some of his Danish colleagues saw him as a weather vane, who blindly followed the winds of fashion, his furniture, as well as his houses, were based on deep analyses of the functionality of each component. His sofas, for instance, are shaped to provide excellent support when one sits and looks straight ahead, but also if two people are turned to each other in conversation. Juhl started his career as a furniture designer in the 1930s when, contrary to his joiner-trained peers, he designed heavy, plush furniture. In the beginning, his furniture was a strong contrast to the trendsetting furniture professor Kaare Klint and his students rational, traditional and geometric designs. Juhl didn t believe in blindly passing on tradition, but let himself be inspired by

3 the modern art of his time. Not only did his furniture look like sculptures by Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Jean Arp and Erik Thommesen they were often also exhibited together with these artworks. Also his interior designs were inspired by the sculptor s contemplations on free and static movement. His early furniture sculptures were shaped like big mammals. Juhl saw himself as a modernist and thus succumbed to modernism s demand of honest constructions, reflecting the form in their function. Upholstered furniture as such had been heavily criticized since the breakthrough of modernism in the 1920s because it hid its construction. In the first decades of the 20th century Central European modernists like Gerrit Rietveld and Marcel Breuer completely denounced upholstery while favouring bare, geometric constructions which looked like scaffolding or sitting machines. Although Juhl aligned himself along early modernism, he actually only ever designed one chair without upholstery. During the 1940s Juhl acknowledged that the voluminous upholstered furniture didn t fit into the small flats of the time. Simultaneously he sought to lay bare the construction principle of furniture. He discovered, that what makes a chair comfortable is not necessarily the thickness of the upholstery but more importantly that the upholstered surfaces give support in the right places. Like other modernistic pioneers, Juhl started from scratch without role models. He designed by analysing how the individual components of the chair should carry the human body. But contrary to his modernist contemporaries, with their strictly stream-lined, open, scaffolding structures, Juhl thought that furniture should have what he called animalistic pleasing character like Egyptian furniture design. Juhl translated the bare construction into organic form like in his 44 chair, also called the Bone Chair. The potential strength of the material was utilised to the maximum just like in nature s own constructions, which have most volume where necessary. The geometric, industrial-aesthetic modernism in steel and straight lines, Juhl translated into daring, supple joinery which put enormous demands on the joiners who where to produce the design. Each element of the design flowed seamlessly into each other. Like other early modernists, Juhl took pride in making both the structurally supportive elements of the furniture and the seated person look as though they are floating. In some of his chairs, the backrest and the seat are almost invisibly joined, as if they were clouds floating through the room. As modernism prescribes, Juhl used the corbel method, where surfaces cover the carrying element. He became known for his special ability to separate the carried and the carrying elements. In one of his main pieces the Chieftain Chair from 1949, the armrest and seat were cut free so the organic, delicately upholstered surfaces seemed to float. The chair, which had elements reminiscent of aboriginal tools, became a turning point for Juhl. Spearheaded by Juhl and Hans J. Wegner s furniture from the same year, 1949 marked the break through for Danish design in the USA. Juhl represented one end of the scale in the Danish post-war version of modernism: Danish Design. In terms of shape and form he was the most daring, bordering on almost surreal organic modernism. Danish furniture design had a strong break through internationally at a time when almost all other countries had abandoned the craftsmanship tradition and embraced industrial mass production. Most of the Danish chairs were inspired by historic prototypes, and so were Juhl s to some extent. The Chieftain Chair, for instance, was inspired by the backrest construction of Egyptian chairs. But the thing that set Juhl s designs apart was an extremely sophisticated craftsmanship which didn t look like anything a machine could produce a completely bio-morph creation, which made a chair appear like a living sculpture in the room. Finn Juhl s artistic furniture designs hit solar plexus, particularly in the USA where the post-war period was characterized by a search back to the sensory qualities of craftsmanship and towards more human, organic shapes. Juhl s furniture was also produced in alternative wood materials: cedar, maple, nut and Brazilian rosewood. However, it was Juhl s use of teak, which became a turning point. Before Juhl, teak was primarily used for outdoor furniture, but with Juhl as its standard-bearer, the warmth of teak moved into the living rooms and became synonymous with new optimism and freedom.

4 The American avant-garde easily understood Juhl s dionysian, dynamic lines. It was after all the Americans who had introduced the streamlined design of the 1930s. But Juhl stayed within the ideal of European modernism s idealistic principles of honest, transparent constructions. His supple shapes were anything but stylised and decorative. In the post-war period, European modernism lived on among the American art elite, which Juhl became part of through his friendship with Edgar Kaufmann Jr, the then Director of the Industrial Design department of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Not only were Juhl s own designs an important exponent of Danish Design abroad, he also designed important travelling exhibitions on Danish design in the USA. Juhl also completed several prestigious interior design projects abroad, most notably the Trusteeship Council Chamber at the United Nations building in New York. Similar to his daring choice of material and shape, his use of colour was revolutionary. Like the early international modernists, he wasn t afraid of making a sensory impact also in this area he was different from his Danish contemporaries known for their discreet, almost ascetic attitude to colour. Textile or painted surfaces in Juhl s designs created a contrast to the natural wood. Furniture, as well as interiors, was strongly expressive in the choice of colour. Juhl s furniture speaks loudly and prompts adoration because it possesses an incredible lightness and sculptural elegance beyond its own time. Juhl was the main exponent of the organic variety of international modernism. He was a Danish designer, who communicated the sensory qualities of wood and his love of finding inspiration in nature and history to the rest of the world. Contrary to most Danish design, his furniture is not pragmatic and sensible but saturated with a grand and exclusive zest for life. It speaks of an originality, individualism and freedom, which most of the world can appreciate today. Christian Holmsted Olesen Curator, Designmuseum Danmark

5 109 Chair 1946

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7 poet sofa 1941

8 57 sofa 1957

9 japan chair 1953

10 46 chair 1946 / 1953

11 46 Sofa 1946

12 4 4 chair 1944

13 chief tain chair 1949

14 K aufm ann Table 1945

15 baker sofa 1951

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17 45 Chair 1945

18 500 Table 1958

19 Tr ay table 1965

20 Pelic an chair 1940

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22 108 chair 1946

23 cock tail Table 1951

24 Nyhavn Table 1945

25 e ye Table 1948 Ross Table 1948

26 Onecollection A/S Vesterled 19 DK-6950 Ringkøbing Phone Fax Showroom Copenhagen Nordre Toldbod 25 DK-1259 København K Showroom Ringkøbing Østergade 11 DK-6950 Ringkøbing Design: Michael Weber, Photos: Andreas Weiss, Location: Ordrupgaard Museum,

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