Six bent plywood midcentury modern chairs are displayed inside glossy white square cells at the Danish Museum of Art & Design. Three chairs are on the top row, and three more are below. Arne Jacobsen's Series 7 chair is at upper right. None of the chairs is labeled.
Design 101

When Danish Modern Style Ruled

by Laura Grey No Comments
An elegant dark-stained chair, the Faaborg chair has a straight front legs, but the back legs are slightly set in from the corners and flare outward slightly. The back of the chair seat is rounded, and the low back of the chair flares out to the sides slightly. Set into the chair back is pale wood caning—interwoven strips of thin, pale wood that contrasts with the darker frame of the chair.
Kaare Klint’s Faaborg Chair of 1913–1915 combined modern simplicity and traditional European elegance. It inspired the stylish yet functional chairs of the later Danish modern period | Carl Petersen, Faaborg Museum

In the 1940s, during World War II, Danish designers were prominent leaders in the movement to design and make affordable, functional, elegant furniture. Danish designer Kaare Klint (1888–1954) is today considered the father of modern Danish design. He helped establish the Department of Furniture Design at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, and taught and inspired some of the designers who would go on to be stars of the Danish modern style movement. Among his students and followers were Hans Wegner, Arne Jacobsen, Mogens Koch, and Poul Kjaerholm, all luminaries of Danish modern design’s golden age.

Like the designers at Germany’s Bauhaus, Klint believed that function should guide form. As early as the 1910s, he combined traditional Danish furniture-making techniques with a streamlined minimalist aesthetic. This led to a simple yet refined style that emphasized well-crafted, high-quality furnishings.

Mass-Produced, Affordable & Chic

Many Arne Jacobsen Series 7 pale bent-wood chairs arrayed in offset lines seen from above, all with a white floor showing between the many chairs
Mass-produced of inexpensive plywood, but so eye-catching! Arne Jacobsen Series 7 chairs, Museet for Söfart, Helsingör | Bengt Oberger, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

World War II made good furniture-making materials scarce, so Danish designers turned to inexpensive, accessible, and versatile plywood. Their innovative construction methods elevated this humble material. They implemented mass production techniques that let them create stylish, inexpensive furniture on a large scale. They then exported it to the world. In post-war Europe and in the U.S., minimalist yet sensuously curvy Danish furniture designs were suddenly accessible, and often affordable.

Danish Furniture Design Innovators

Furniture designers Arne Jacobsen and Hans Wegner were strongly influenced by the bent plywood designs of American husband-and-wife design team Charles and Ray Eames. Works by Jacobsen (who designed the iconic and curvaceous Drop, Egg, and Swan chairs) and Wegner (known for his Wishbone and Round chair designs) were much in demand during the 1950s and 1960s, when midcentury modernism (also known as MCM style) was the leading interior design style. Fellow Dane Finn Juhl’s highly sought-after pieces were especially sculptural, and sometimes colorful. His chairs, sofas, desks, and tables were by turns whimsical, serious, or sexy, and they helped to establish Danish modern as a major force in midcentury America.

A pale golden wooden chair with a matching pale woven rush seat. The chair's top rail continues around to the sides in lieu of arms. A Y-shaped (or wishbone-shaped) back runs from the top of the chair to the top of the seat. The sides of the chair begin at the top of the chair and then curve inward toward the back, becoming straight as they become the back legs. The sinuous but simple curves of the rounded top of the chair and the swoop of the sides that narrow to become legs give the otherwise very simple chair a feeling of energetic movement.
Nat’l Museum of Art, Architecture & Design for Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)
A single Arne Jacobsen Series 7 chair sits on a white floor with a black wall behind it. The curved single piece of plywood is bent in a 90-degree angle to create both the seat and the chair back. The top of the seat back is straight and it curves at the top corners and narrows toward the seat, creating a kind of curved triangle whose base point melds into the seat. The seat is curved at the back and sides (which dip upward slightly) and curves down and forward at the front where leg will drape over the edge. The top of the chair rests on thin, bent chromed steel legs that end in black rubber feet.
Holger.Ellgaard for Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
A simple but comfortable armless easy chair wit a high, curving back. The contiguous back and seat are wrapped in straps of caramel leather all sewn together horizontally around a steel frame. The seat rises in front and is lower at the curve at the back to better support the hips and knees. The chair rests on a chromed steel base that creates a backward C curve. The bottom of the C extends out to the back, and the top of the chair back rests over the ends of the chair runners, making the chair balance safely without having any legs get in the way in the front
milo 3oneseven for Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Six very curvy teal, aqua, and lime-colored upholstered chairs with stubby pale legs sit on a matching kidney-shaped rug in front of a tall window in the all-white atrium lobby of the Swedbank headquarters in Sweden. Another cluster of Pelican chairs in shades of red and orange sit around pale round tables on their own matching kidney-shaped rug at the back of the lobby. At right is a wide staircase rising to the second floor.
Sinikka Halme, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
An elegant indoor lounge chair with almost no straight lines, this chair has a gently sloping backrest and a curving seat long enough to support the legs. The seating areas appear to be made of tightly woven dark golden rushes pulled around a dark teak wood frame. The arms are made of smooth arcing wood that flows upward at about a 35 degree angle. The arms continue past the seat back to become the back legs of the chair, and then curve back toward the seat to create the frame. The front legs are short, straight pieces of wood attached to the ret of the curving frame.
Centre Pompidou (CC BY 2.0)
Top row: Hans Wegner’s Wishbone chair; Arne Jacobsen’s Series 7 chair; Poul Kjaerholm’s PK20 lounge chair | Bottom row: A flock of Finn Juhl’s Pelican chairs—the original was designed in 1940; sleek, functional, and stylish—a simple yet unique Hans Wegner Lounge Chair

From the late 1960s through the 1990s, Danish furniture exports dropped. The Danish modern boom of the 1950s and 1960s had saturated the market. Furthermore, Danish modern furniture’s reputation for quality was lost in the 1970s as Denmark began exporting cheaper versions. Other countries created and sold knock-offs as well, and Danish modern furniture lost its cachet.

To learn more about the enduring popularity of midcentury modern (MCM style, read my article on Midcentury Modern Interior Design.

Danish Modern Housewares & Decor

In addition to Danish furniture pieces, Danish modern decor elements were also highly prized in the fifties and sixties. Sinuous teak trays and huge round wooden salad bowls were musts at dinner parties. Stainless steel serving pieces showed up at every potluck, barbecue, and cocktail party. Danish lamps and other light fixtures often featured teak and stainless steel. Ceramic decor items by Danish artisans brought earthy, textural elements into midcentury homes.

A low, round, bright red enameled baking and serving casserole dish with thin matching red enameled steel handles and a flat round lid. The lid has thin crisscrossed handles that create an X shape whose ends bend down to attached to the lid top. The lid can be inverted to create a trivet on which the casserole can rest to protect tabletops from burns.
The Købenstyle casserole, still in production today, was designed by Jens Quistgaard for Dansk in 1956. It’s made of enameled carbon steel and comes with a lid that doubles as a trivet | Dansk.com

Danish designers like Jens Harald Quistgaard created earthy, solid, organic forms in metal and ceramic as well as in wood. Often asymmetrical, roughly formed, and highly textured, his ceramics took inspiration from forms found in nature.

Leaf-shaped Danish wooden serving trays and bowls by Quistgaard and other designers of this period still abound in second-hand shops. Quistgaard’s large, bold, thick-sided salad bowls of the 1950s and 1960s have had a resurgence in popularity recent years. Vintage versions are in demand, as are modern versions still in production.

Dansk International

Six pieces of flatware made of stainless steel with curved wooden handles are arrayed on a white background. From left to right are a salad fork, dinner fork, knife, a butter knife, a soup spoon, and a teaspoon in Jens Quistgaard's Fjord pattern. The stainless steel parts of each piece have rounded sides that echo the shapes of the handles: tapered at each end, and wider in the middle.
Flatware in Jens Quistgaard’s Fjord pattern—it inspired the creation of Dansk International, which ultimately produced over 2,000 of Quistgaard’s designs | Brooklyn Museum for Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

In 1954, Martha and Ted Nierenberg of the U.S. discovered Quistgaard’s teak and stainless steel flatware on a trip to Copenhagen. They convinced him to let them mass-produce pieces based on his designs for the U.S. market, and their new company, Dansk, was born. The flatware was such a success that Dansk and Quistgaard continued their association for decades. By the 1980s, Quistgaard had designed over 4,000 items for Dansk. The company became known to the U.S. market as the source for the latest in Danish modern design.

Danish Modern Today

A small forest green table lamp. The base is a green oval shape with a black push-button on switch. A very thin green tubular arm rises from the base. The head of the lamp starts as a small cylinder and then expands into a bell at the bottom, but the bell flares out on one side only, so half of the lamphead forms a straight diagonal line and the other half flares out from the straight side to create a circular opening for the light at the bottom.
Design Within Reach sells Arne Jacobsen’s AJ Table Lamp—designed for the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen in 1960—in multiple eye-catching colors | Design Within Reach

Vintage Danish Modern furniture and home decor pieces in good condition can fetch hefty prices at auctions or online marketplaces. They can fit seamlessly into modern homes furnished in midcentury modern, Japandi, Scandi, minimalist, or contemporary styles. You can still find some bargains on these pieces at thrift or furniture consignment stores or at online auctions. If you’ve got the cash, stores like Design Within Reach sell gorgeous new contemporary Danish modern pieces. If you’re on a less lavish budget, you can find more affordable modern pieces inspired by Danish modern design at retailers like Room & Board, West Elm, and Rove Concepts.

Sustainable & affordable Danish modern

Lanoba Design makes it possible to own a reconditioned piece of genuine Danish modern furniture at a reasonable price. Danish-born Lars Noah Balderskilde goes to Denmark every year to source original vintage Danish modern pieces with good lines. He ships them to the U.S., and he and his husband and business partner David Singh refurbish the pieces. They then resell them in the U.S.

Lanoba sells some vintage pieces in as-is condition. The company refurbishes others for buyers who are willing to pay an additional 20%. Even when refinished, reupholstered, or otherwise repaired, these pieces end up costing about the same as a high-quality modern reproduction. However, the reconditioned pieces have the provenance and cachet of being original vintage midcentury furnishings. By making beautiful vintage pieces available to today’s lovers of Danish modern style, Lanoba provides a sustainable alternative that keeps furniture out of landfills, and gives historic pieces a whole new life.

At top:

Iconic midcentury chairs on display at the Danish Museum of Art & Design in 2018 | Helen Ilus for Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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