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Design

Mid-Century Danish Design: Finn Juhl’s Biography

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Not many Danish designers were internationally known during the Mid Century: Finn Juhl was one of them. He was born in 1912 and after his graduation in 1934 at the Royal Academy in Copenhagen he worked for ten years for the Vilhelm Lauritzen’s architect studio.

At the beginning of his career Finn Juhl never considered to become an industrial designer In fact, he realized his first designs more for his own use than for a mass-production. In addition, he was always caring more about the form of his object than to the function: a characteristic that provoked not few criticisms from the Danish design environment.

The Pelikan Chair designed in 1939, one of his first furniture project, was exhibited during the Guild Exhibitions -a yearly Cabinetmaker’s Exhibition- and highly criticized because of its organic form far from the Danish furniture tradition of functional objects. However, despite the numerous criticisms Finn Juhl works started to be appreciated abroad throughout the 1940s for the virtuous, radical and organic design clearly inspired by contemporary artists like Alexander Calder and Hans Arp and by natural forms; like the early Pelikan Chair and the Chieftain Chair.

The mix of craft manufacture, care for the details, high quality materials and contemporary art influences made the Finn Juhl’s pieces easy to distinguish thanks to the organic and sculptural forms. The exclusive design caught the US company Baker Furniture attention that mass-produced Juhl’s furniture from the early 50s on; the Baker Sofa is one of the piece he designed for the company.

Finn Juhl also designed interiors for apartments and exhibitions including accessorizes like vases for Kay Bojesen, kitchen appliances for the General Electric, rugs for Unika-Vaev and glass accessories for Georg Jensen. On the interiors‘ side, his project to furnish the Trusteeship Council Chamber in New York helped his popularity to grow further and the ‚Danish Modern Design‘ to become known and appreciated internationally.

Scandinavian architects and designers often chose natural materials like the wood for their works; sometimes taking it to the most extreme use possible. Also Finn Juhl gave his significant contribution to the wood-manufacturing implementing new Teak processing techniques that allowed him -for example- to bend the wood giving to his pieces organic and virtuous forms; starting what was later called the ‚Teak style‘.

During the 60s ant 70s the Finn Juhl’s furniture were almost forgotten by the market. But, starting from the 80s they come back winning, in 2010, a prize in the ‚Best Reisue/Sofa design‘ category of the Wallpaper Design Award.

Finn Juhl has been one of the greatest designers of the mid century period. To discover everything about it , check Mid Century Home now!

Design

The Origins of The Success of The Mid-Century Design

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Sometimes you’ll hear people say that Mid-Century furniture, design and architecture is having a ‚rebirth‘. Pieces of furniture from the fifties has been resurging for around twenty years now and it shows no signs and symptoms of reducing at all.

There are handful of things about which one can make so bound a pronouncement of eternity as a George Nelson bench a Noguchi table or Charles Eames lounge. Every time something attains that level of design purity, it will still be popular rediscovered again by every new generation.

Designer Paul Frankl once wrote: „Style is the external expression of the inner spirit of any given time.“ As it turned out, the exuberant style of the Mid-Century experienced a lot more endurance than anyone could imagine. Its boundaries were not hard-edged, through an arbitrary cut-off line at 1960.

Instead, it truly is continuing heartily into following millennium; still defining modernism for our time. Its prototypical shape isn’t merely the cutting edge of a single decade, but overreaching appearance language that represents the greatest part of a century.

The frank construction and peculiar designs of the nineteen fifties, that once caused scoffing in scholarly circles, no longer seem outrageous. In light of the post-modernist playful and brutal deconstructionism of the 1980’s, ’50s home furniture appears, in fact, refined. The need for this amazing kind of furniture, for example, is mirrored in the increasing number of new stores specialized in mid-century, vintage and retro items and by the reissue -by the Herman Miller Company after years of customers‘ requestes- of the classics pieces from the mid-century representing the apex of ’50s design in America: like the Eames and Nelson’s works.

If you liked this article and you want to learn more about mid-century, check Mid Century Home now!