Hans Wegner 512 Chair

When he designed the first edition of his modest Chinese chair — or China chair — Denmark native Hans Wegner (1914–2007) had been reportedly moved by portraits he’d seen of Danish businessmen relaxing in traditional round-backed Ming dynasty–era chairs. While the legendary furniture maker’s tribute to East Asian seating — a minimal cherrywood chair with a curved bentwood back support and removable leather seat cushion — called on Oriental forms that preceded him by hundreds of years, it merge...

In its broad form and wealth of hard angles, Hans J. Wegner’s Flag Halyard chair is one of the more visually flamboyant pieces to emerge from the Danish mid-century movement. Legend has it that Wegner (1914–2007) conceptualized the piece in 1950 while on vacation at the beach, molding its seat out of sand and attaching a bit of halyard — rope typically used on sailboats — that he found nearby. Danish brand Getama picked up the chair for production, an undoubtedly difficult task given the pie...

Part furniture and part sculpture, the Ox chair is, in fact, a practical chair, even as its playful animal-like form draws on Pablo Picasso’s 1940s-era abstract representations of bulls. Danish designer Hans J. Wegner (1914–2007) was enamored of Picasso’s work and was inspired to break from his more typical Scandinavian modern aesthetic to create this sculptural statement piece, which was eventually manufactured by A.P. Stolen.  Raised in southern Denmark, Wegner was a cabinetmaker’s apprenti...