Early Sawbuck Chair by Hans J. Wegner, circa 1950

Danish designer Hans J. Wegner (1914–2007) got his start as a 14-year-old apprentice to Danish master cabinetmaker H.F. Stahlberg, and that lifelong dedication to the art of woodworking can be seen in his 1952 CH29P chair. Nicknamed the Sawbuck chair, its legs recall the sawbuck, or sawhorse, workbenches used by carpenters but reimagined for a modern design that combines clean lines and comfort.

Known as the “Master of the Chair,” Wegner would create over 500 variations on seating across his career, his practice leading the way in the style and attention to quality that would define Danish modern design in the 1950s and ’60s. Each chair he introduced — the Flag Halyard chair, the Round chair and many more — balanced aesthetics and function, often comprising just a few simple components as part of his “continuous process of purification” in his designs.

The Sawbuck chair followed a 1951 lounge chair that also had tapered legs and a large H-shape frame that swayed back against a short H-shape frame. The 1952 model refined this idea. Wegner added cutout details on two sides of its back and placed an emphasis on ergonomics by widening its upholstered seat at the front. Paired with the concave backrest, the Sawbuck chair accommodates a variety of sitting postures while still being a sculptural object.

Carl Hansen & Søn, the Danish furniture company with which Wegner collaborated on many of his designs, took the Sawbuck chair out of production in the 1970s. Two decades later, at the encouragement of Wegner’s family, it was relaunched in a variety of wood types and upholstery options to fit into contemporary interiors as an update to the elegant original design.

Best known for his chairs and other seating pieces — though a master of many furniture types like sofas and tables — Hans Wegner was a prolific designer whose elegant, often ebullient, forms and devotion to the finest methods in joinery made "Danish Modern" a popular byword for stylish, well-made furniture in the mid-20th century.

Wegner considered himself a carpenter first and a furniture designer second. Like his peers Arne Jacobsen and Finn Juhl, Wegner believed that striking aesthetics in furniture were based on a foundation of practicality: a chair must be comfortable and sturdy before it is chic.

In keeping with that tenet, several of Hans Wegner’s best chair designs have their roots in traditional seating forms. The Peacock chair (designed in 1947) is a throne-like adaptation of the Windsor chair; pieces from the China chair series (begun in 1944) as well as the 1949 Wishbone chair, with its distinctive Y-shaped back splat, are derived from 17th-century Ming seating pieces, as is the upholstered Ox chair (1960). Wegner’s comfy Papa Bear chair (1951) is an almost surreally re-scaled English wingback chair.

Wegner’s most representative piece, the Round chair (1949), gained a footnote in political history when it was used on the TV stage of the first Kennedy-Nixon debate of 1960. That chair, along with Wegner’s more bravura designs — for example, the 1963 Shell chair, with its curved surfboard-shaped seat — bring a quietly sculptural presence to a room.

Wegner was a designer who revered his primary material — wood — and it shows. His wood gathers patina and character with age; every Hans Wegner piece testifies to the life it has led.

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