This spectacular rosewood secretary/dresser was designed by Johannes Sorth for Nexo Mobelfabrik. Featuring an upper open bookshelf with 2 adjustable shelves, a tambour door that opens to reveal 3 lovely drawers with crossed circle pulls, an open section with shelf, and angled mail slots. The desktop pulls open when in use as a secretary. Beneath are 3 drawers with carved inset pulls and beech drawer frame construction – the first is divided into 3 sections and all are dovetailed at the back. In fabulous restored condition, this lovely not only has killer grain, but it is all wood construction and offers so many practical uses! Of minor note, someone cut a hole in the backboard to pass wires through just below the lower adjustable shelf (see photos) – we’ve reinstalled it but there is always the option to remove it again if the hole is desired. Dimensions: 39.5″W x 17″D(desktop closed)/23.75″D(desktop open) x 28.25″H(desktop)/72″H(top).
In the last MCM Furniture Design History post, we mentioned that Kaare Klint founded the furniture design department at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1924 and influenced the next generation of Danish furniture designers. The designer in this week’s MCM Pick of the Week, Kai Kristiansen, is one of those designers.
Kristiansen’s style, presumably informed by Klint, is known for clean lines, functionalism, and Kristiansen’s own outside-the-box thinking.
Their works, often made in warm blond wood, domesticated the cold chrome shine of the Bauhaus-influenced International style. In the process, they found a way to dovetail the words “Danish” and “modern” for the first time, joining cabinetmaker-guild traditions of high craftsmanship, quality and comfort with modernist principles of simplicity and graphic beauty.
Grete Jalk (1920-2006) was a Danish designer who made her mark on the design scene in the 1950s and 60s. She pursued an impressive list of academic qualifications, starting with the law and philosophy studies in which she chose to abandon halfway through.Instead, she commenced her design career in 1939 at the Drawing and Applied school for Women, followed by an apprenticeship as a cabinetmaker where she graduated in 1946.
Finn Juhl designed, built, and furnished his house, Kratvaenget 15 in 1941-42 with his first wife, Inge-Marie Skaarup. It’s located in Ordrup, just outside of Copenhagen. Juhl lived here until his death in 1989, after which Hanne Wilhelm Hansen, a music publisher who lived with Juhl after he and Skaarup divorced, looked after the house.
The well known furniture school of the Kongilige Danske Kunstakademi (Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts) produced many famous alumni. One of them was Borge Mogensen, best known for his revolutionary Danish furniture design.
His mentor, Kaare Klint, guided Mogensen to study the proportions of the ideal type of traditional English chairs such as the Windsor chair and update the design into more modern contours.
Trained by cabinetmaker Niels Vodder at the school of interior design in the mid- 1940s.
Further graduated as architect in 1947 at Kunstakadamiet in Copenhagen, with Finn Juhl as professor and mentor.
After graduation Arne Vodder started as Architect at Hindsgaul in Copenhagen and worked, among other design assignments, with office decor.
Niels Otto Møller (b. Århus, 1920 – d. 1982) earned a reputation for creating design of a consistent excellence in quality and workmanship. Møller’s dedication to his craft stemmed from his cabinetmaking apprenticeship, completed in 1939, which was followed by further study at the Århus School of Design.In 1944, Møller founded his own furniture production company, JL Møllers Møbelfabrik, in a tiny workshop in the center of his hometown. While overseeing traditional furniture production in his factory,
Danish designer Peter Hvidt (1916-1986) was trained as an architect and as cabinetmaker at the School of Arts and Crafts in Copenhagen. He exhibited regularly at the Cabinetmaker’s Guild exhibitions, as a designer and as an exhibition architect, and also taught at the School of Arts and Crafts from 1942-45. In 1944 he designed the “Portex” chair, one of the first stacking chairs to come out of Denmark, and opened a furniture design office with Orla Mølgaard-Nielsen.
