Finn Juhl 'Japan' Chair, Model 137 for France & Søn, 1960s

In its distinctive embodiment of the East-meets-West dialogue represented in mid-century modern art and design, the Japan chair draws on the simple silhouette of the famed Itsukushima Shrine near Hiroshima, Japan. Designed by legendary Danish architect, interior designer and furniture maker Finn Juhl (1912–89) and produced by furniture manufacturer France & Søn, the chair belongs to a series that includes a two-seater sofa, a three-seater sofa and a footstool.

Although he originally wanted to study art history, Juhl’s father urged him to enroll in the architecture school at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. He spent a decade thereafter working for Vilhelm Lauritzen’s architecture firm, where Juhl specialized in interior design. He went on to open his own firm in 1945, establishing himself among a group of young Danish designers who sought to reinvent the national design zeitgeist. The result was the Scandinavian modernism movement beloved by many today.

For his 1957 Japan chair, Juhl adopted the elegant form of a Japanese Torii, integrating its shape into the piece’s exposed low-slung wood frame and tapered legs, which support a minimalist upholstered backrest and seat. While many mid-century designers had the future in mind, Juhl looked to the past. Today the Japan chair, along with Juhl’s entire body of work, is produced exclusively by the House of Finn Juhl, an offshoot of Danish furniture company One Collection. His designs are particularly popular in Japan; there is a replica of his home in the city of Gifu and a House of Finn Juhl hotel in the village of Hakuba, near Nagano.

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, credenzas 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. 

Juhl’s earliest works, designed in the late 1930s, are perhaps his most idiosyncratic. The influence of modern art is clear in his 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 workshop of Danish cabinetmaker Niels Vodder began to issue his designs. Yet Juhl’s 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 Judas table — a piece ornamented with stylish inlaid silver plaquettes — and the biomorphic Baker sofa. After an article authored by Kaufmann on Juhl and his work appeared in the U.S.-based magazine Interiors in 1948, he began receiving American commissions. 

Kaufmann commissioned Juhl to create the exhibition design for, and contribute pieces to, the 1951 edition of the Good Design shows he organized for MoMA and Chicago’s Merchandise Mart. Baker Furniture asked Juhl to design for the firm, and he produced a collection of chairs, tables and cabinets, and, later, the 1957 sofa. 

Scandinavian modernist seating, such as the chairs and sofas Juhl created for Baker, became immensely popular in postwar America, as the seeds of the Scandinavian style that Juhl sowed took root and spread in the United States. Juhl and his work featured prominently in the landmark show “Design from Scandinavia,” which opened in 1954 at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and traveled to 24 museums in the U.S. and Canada; over three years, it was seen by more than a million people.

Juhl’s furniture — as well as his ceramics, tableware and accessories — has an air of relaxed sophistication and elegance that is unique in the realm of mid-century design.

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