Finn Juhl 12 Chair Set FJ55 by Niels Vodder

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Finn Juhl 12 Chair Set FJ55 by Niels Vodder

About the Item

The FJ55 chair was designed in 1955 and presented in 1956. This was a time of turmoil for Finn Juhl with the failure of the Baker collaboration and while Baker is somewhat disregarded now, back then the fact that he landed that contract made his career taking him from an upstart with unorthodox ideas to the model for other designers. He had always maintained his original retail presence in the USA at the ultra high end Georg Jensen store in New York City, where some of his Niels Vodder, Bovirke, and Baker designs were sold. With Baker winding down his line, he tried to rebuild on this. Lunning, the owner of the GJ franchise, wanted to expand the danish import furniture business and the result of this was the eponymous Lunning chain of stores in major markets the USA. And Finn Juhl’s danish made furniture became the catalog leading feature in this plan. Simultaneously, Niels Vodder had been changing his production methods away from making furniture in his tiny workshop, with his one journeyman and an apprentice or two. He was simply too busy and there was a larger market if the furniture could become more affordable, so his solution was to outsource production to other high end shops. We do not know for certain which pieces were outsourced and when with very few exceptions, but obviously high volume pieces would have been the likeliest suspects. Also the question of when is affected by the fact that Niels Vodder opened his own much larger workshop on the outskirts of Copenhagen (where space was much cheaper) in 1960 so that he could bring more production back in-house. Yet even in those years PP Møbler was contracted for the production of the FJ45 lounge chair. In this light, a dining chair is naturally a high volume item because one sale averaged probably 8-10 units. If you were buying chairs for Finn Juhl’s long Silver Table, well that would mean 12 chairs for comfortable spacing or 14 chairs if you followed the silver disks that indicated chair placement as nominally intended. The other production problem that Niels Vodder had faced was how to compactly export furniture. This was a problem that he had cleverly solved with a retail partner like Lunning who could be counted on for some minor assembly and for upholstery. And this went as far back as the FJ45 lounge chair that had been designed such that the upholstered frame and wood frame were separate units and the wood side assemblies could be glued, sanded, and oiled, then stored flat until the seat frame came back from the upholsterer with the customer’s choice of fabric on it. (Note that stock seat frames could be compactly stacked while awaiting purchasers ). And finally the simple lateral joints could be glued up. By 1948 Finn had streamlined this by entirely separating the wooden and upholstered elements joining them only with a brass standoff sleeve hiding a screw. And by the mid 1950s he had developed this to a small wooden frame that could be stacked which is what we see with the FJ55 chair. Aesthetically his floating seats created an illusion of lightness and became an iconic and much imitated part of mid century modern furniture and we tend to look at it only from an aesthetic standpoint, but I would argue that Finn Juhl was considering the problem as an industrial designer foremost and then finding an artistic solution. The first iteration of the FJ55, which was extremely short lived and is extremely rare today, had no wooden undercarriage and so the frames could pack very very compactly. Unfortunately this was an insufficient structure for the rigorous life of a dining chair. Finn Juhl modified the design, adding a rear tie stretcher and struts, which he used on many designs, most notably the FJ46 desk chair. So a large stack of wooden frames, with a small stack of seat and backrest shells and bags of screws and dowel sleeves could be shipped from Copenhagen to anywhere in the world. In analyzing the frame, it is also possible that it was finished into two separate sub assemblies, front and rear, divided at the simple butt joints behind the front rail. Final assemble in the destination country then would have been a matter of glueing and clamping. In 1953, Finn Juhl had designed his iconic Reading Chair, which featured wooden parts and joinery notably well suited to machine production. Unfortunately it was a design suited to a very casual, informal home that would include sitting backwards (even potentially setting a book on the backrest shelf so as to read), but his buyers and retailers were of the most formal and luxurious end of the spectrum. It was iconic even becoming the Bovirke logo, but it was not a huge success. The FJ55 took many of these ideas of affordable production, while shedding the casual and strange backwards sitting and reading shelf idea. It retained the ability to use the crest rail as a handle to carry the chair. The only flaw to this plan was that it was a bit late and other competitors were so much less expensive, and by then well-studied in mimicking Finn Juhl’s look. These chairs were originally bought to accompany the Silver / Judas table also from this estate bought at Illums Bolighus in 1964-65. Each chair is marked with an Illums Bolighus medallion. Note these chairs in the context of the larger estate are an interesting example of the arrangements around marking furniture. In the estate the high volume and Illums-exclusive pieces are only marked with an Illums Bolighus medallion, while the low volume designs, like the accompanying Judas / Silver table are marked with the Niels Vodder brand. This appears to be the result of the contractural arrangement between Illums Bolighus and Niels Vodder. TABLE NOT INCLUDED.

Creator:
Niels Vodder (Cabinetmaker),Illums Bolighus (Retailer),Finn Juhl (Designer)
Dimensions:
Height: 28.75 in (73 cm)Width: 20.08 in (51 cm)Depth: 20.87 in (53 cm)
Style:
Mid-Century Modern (Of the Period)
Materials and Techniques:
Leather,Teak
Place of Origin:
Denmark
Period:
1960-1969
Date of Manufacture:
circa 1964
Condition:
Reupholstered. Wear consistent with age and use. The seats have been reupholstered in leather.
Seller Location:
Albuquerque, NM
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU7219229979422

Shop All Finn Juhl

Finn Juhl

Along with Hans Wegner, Arne Jacobsen and Børge Mogensen, Finn Juhl was one of the great masters of mid-20th-century Danish design. Juhl was the first among that group to have his work promoted overseas, bringing the character of the nation’s furnishings — and the inherent principles of grace, craftsmanship and utility on which they were based — to an international audience. A stylistic maverick, Juhl embraced expressive, free-flowing shapes in chair and sofa designs much earlier than his colleagues, yet even his quietest pieces incorporate supple, curving forms that are at once elegant and ergonomic.

As a young man, Juhl hoped to become an art historian, but his father steered him into a more practical course of study in architecture. He began designing furniture in the late 1930s, a discipline in which, despite his education, Juhl was self-taught, and quite proud of the fact. His earliest works, designed in the late 1930s, are perhaps his most idiosyncratic. The influence of contemporary art is clear in Juhl's 1939 Pelican chair: an almost Surrealist take on the classic wing chair. Critics reviled the piece, however; one said it looked like a "tired walrus." Juhl had tempered his creativity by 1945, when the Danish furniture-making firm Niels Vodder began to issue his designs. Yet his now-classic NV 45 armchair still demonstrates panache, with a seat that floats above the chair’s teak frame.

Juhl first exhibited his work in the United States in 1950, championed by Edgar Kaufmann Jr., an influential design critic and scion of America’s most prominent family of modern architecture and design patrons. (Kaufmann’s father commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright’s design of the house “Fallingwater.”) Juhl quickly won a following for such signature designs as the supremely comfortable Chieftan lounge chair, the biomorphic Baker sofa, and the Judas table, a piece ornamented with stylish inlaid silver plaquettes.

As you will see from the offerings on 1stDibs, Finn Juhl’s furniture — as well as his lighting, ceramics, tableware and accessories — has an air of relaxed sophistication and elegance that is unique in the realm of mid-20th-century design.

Shop All Niels Vodder

Niels Vodder

One of the greatest cabinetmakers in Denmark, Niels Vodder had an illustrious career in Danish furniture. And just as like-minded duos Kaare Klint and Rudolph Rasmussen or Hans Wegner and Johannes Hansen had, Vodder — in partnership with Finn Juhl for more than 20 years — set a high standard for Scandinavian modernism.

Vodder had already established his position as an in-demand cabinetmaker by the time Juhl came into his small workshop in 1937. Juhl — a pioneer of 20th-century Danish design and a pivotal figure in the introduction of Danish modern in the United States — had often authored technically complicated designs that other woodworkers found impossible to execute. Vodder, however, would prove otherwise through his skill and ingenuity. Together, the two ushered in an era of innovative Danish design to an international audience at annual Cabinetmakers’ Guild exhibitions in Copenhagen.

Some of Juhl’s most iconic lounge chairs, such as the NV 45 chair and the Chieftain chair, were first built by Vodder. Most of the seating executed by Vodder was done in teak, although some chairs were handcrafted in mahogany, rosewood and other attractive woods. The Chieftain, formally the FJ 49 A, won the Danish Design Award in the “Classic” category, while the NV 45 can be found in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Juhl’s FJ 51 chair was featured in the United Nations Trusteeship Council chamber — designing and furnishing the chamber was one of Juhl’s notable accomplishments in the early 1950s.

One of the keys to the pair’s success lay in the combination of Juhl’s self-taught approach and Vodder’s progressive outlook on his trade. The latter's workshop was modest in size and he was a pioneer with respect to the use of subcontractors in manufacturing, while Juhl had no formal training in furniture design. Juhl's early ambition was to pursue art history; instead, at his father’s request, he earned a degree in architecture. His studies and enthusiasm for art resulted in inspired pieces that were free from traditional norms, while Vodder possessed the technical prowess to refine and bring these ideas to fruition.

As Ejnar Pedersen — founder of P.P. Møbler — once said, “ (I)f we had no Niels Vodder, we would not have had the Finn Juhl we know today.” Vodder passed away in 1982.

On 1stDibs, find a collection of vintage Niels Vodder seating, tables and case pieces.