This stunning Danish Modern 1 bay Royal Cado System is a modular floating wall unit that is perfect for any room in the house – whether as office storage with a desktop, media storage or storage of your fine collectables! Designed by Poul Cadovius in the 1960s, it is beautifully made and features 2 wall rails that are each 75″ long and may be hung as high as desired. Once the rails are hung, you can place all the components in whatever configuration suits you. The system includes 2 cased goods (boxes) – 1 with a pair of teak sliders with half circle cut away door pulls and wood supports for the single adjustable shelf. It has a depth of 15.75″. The second is a drop down secretary/bar and features 3 removable vertical dividers with gorgeous sculptural supports, and two finger jointed slim line drawers. The desktop lock when closed and the original skeleton key is provided. The desktop measures 15.75″D (when closed)/24.75″D(when open.) The set comes with 2 shelves – one at 15.75″D and the other at 9.5″D – all with the boomerang teak brackets that peg into the rail and the underside of the shelves making them very sturdy. The overall width of the unit is 33″W and an depth of 18″. In gorgeous, restored condition – note that since the elements peg into the rails, they are all floating an inch away from the wall, allowing you to pass any electrical cords behind. A spectacular storage solution with a compact width and tons of function! Overall dimensions: 33″W x 15.75″D.
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.
