Set of four Piet Hein barstools in patinaed leather

About the Item

Set of four Piet Hein bar stools manufactured by Fritz Hansen in Denmark in December 1972. The bar stools are made in steel with a wooden seat upholstered in patinaed Niger goat leather. All the bar stools are marked by Fritz Hansen with the sticker. The stools are in good working condition with a beautiful patina on the leather which adds a great depth and contrast to the bar stools very modern steel frame. Piet Hein (born 16 December 1905 in Copenhagen, died 17 April 1996 in Middelfart) was a Danish poet, writer, inventor and mathematician. Hein used the pseudonyms Kumbel, Kumbel Kumbell and Notorius Jubelco. Piet Hein grew up in a well-educated family, where artists and scientists (among others Niels Bohr) moved around. His mother's cousin was the mother of Karen Blixen. (He was descended from his namesake, the Dutch naval officer and folk hero Piet Pieterszoon Hein.) His first name Piet is the Dutch form of Peter, meaning "rock", "stone", while the surname Hein is a spelling of hen, the old Danish word for a whetstone, although his surname is Dutch. "Kumbel" or kumbl, as it was actually called, also means "stone" in the sense of "memorial stone" or "bauta". Thus, Piet Hein or "Sten Sten" can be translated as "Kumbel Kumbel". He originally wrote the last word with a double-L, but later his signature became just "Kumbel". In antiquity, an inscription like that on the Norse memorial stones was called an epigram, and the epigram is the ancient genre in which Heins gruk entered. Piet Hein was an only child. His mother Estrid Hein (1873-1956) was an ophthalmologist, and he grew up in "Rungsted skovhus", which he later returned to. His father the engineer, according to the son, got involved in elevators and vacuum cleaners before either part was invented. In the poem «Min mor» from 1948, Piet Hein describes his mother in two sentences: You loved the clear cold that guided your doctor's knife. You stored the deep warmth for all that is growth and life. After matriculation at the Metropolitan School, he moved to Stockholm to attend the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts. Without completing his studies, he moved back and studied theoretical physics at the University of Copenhagen, a degree he also did not complete. Kumbel's gruk is world famous. Most are written in Danish, but many have been translated into more than twenty languages. They are short, subtle poems, often with drawings that combine joy with sadness, darkness with light. There were eventually about 10,000 of them. One that the first and most well-known was about the "little cat on the road that was supposed to be his own", a picture of the Danes during the German occupation. Hein is also known for his geometric figures the superellipse (the superellipse table), the superellipsoid and the superegg. At Christmas 1959, he presented the superellipse in connection with Sergels Torg in Stockholm,[7] where it later became a reality. Since then came different variants in three dimensions. The 11 meter high sundial Helix Helios is set up in Egeskov castle park. Piet Hein had some association with Skjern, from where his super eggs from The Super Egg World Center were sold to over 30 countries. "Egg production" was then a successful collaboration between Piet Hein and Th. Shot Knudsen. As a mathematician, Hein was interested in combinatorics, including games. In 1942 he invented the game Hex, originally Polygon. Hein's parents took him on annual trips to Norway, but he was too young to remember his first visit to Norway. He then came to trot Jotunheimen crosswise and had his fourth son christened Jotun. When age caught up with him, he also wrote a grunt about it: Don't look for graying family members on the hairs. Youth is something that comes with the years. In the years 1969-1976 he lived outside London. He then settled on the Funen manor Damsbo.

Creator:

Fritz Hansen (Manufacturer),Piet Hein (Designer)

Dimensions:

Height: 32.29 in (82 cm)Diameter: 13.78 in (35 cm)Seat Height: 32.29 in (82 cm)

Sold As:

Set of 4

Style:

Scandinavian Modern (Of the Period)

Materials and Techniques:

Leather,Steel

Place of Origin:

Denmark

Period:

1970-1979

Date of Manufacture:

1972

Condition:

Reupholstered. Wear consistent with age and use. The barstools have later been reupholstered in Niger goat leather. The frames carry signs of use.

Seller Location:

Valby, DK

Reference Number:

1stDibs: LU6559235300902

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Shop All Fritz Hansen

Fritz Hansen

When the Copenhagen-based furniture maker Fritz Hansen opened for business more than 140 years ago, the company — which today styles itself The Republic of Fritz Hansen — adhered to the traditional, time-honored Danish values of craftsmanship in woodworking and joinery. Yet thanks to the postwar innovations of Arne Jacobsen and others, Fritz Hansen would become the country’s leader in Scandinavian modern design using new, forward-looking materials and methods.

Fritz Hansen started his company in 1872, specializing in the manufacture of small furniture parts. In 1915, the firm became the first in Denmark to make chairs using steam-bent wood (a technique most familiar from birch used in the ubiquitous café chairs by Austrian maker Thonet). At the time, Fritz Hansen was best known for seating that featured curved legs and curlicue splats and referenced 18th-century Chippendale designs.

In the next few decades, the company promoted simple, plain chairs with slatted backs and cane or rush seats designed by such proto-modernist masters as Kaare Klint and Søren Hansen. Still, the most aesthetically striking piece Fritz Hansen produced in the first half of the 20th century was arguably the China chair of 1944 by Hans Wegner — and that piece, with its yoke-shaped bentwood back- and armrest, was based on seating manufactured in China during the Ming dynasty. (Wegner was moved by portraits he’d seen of Danish merchants in the Chinese chairs.)

Everything changed in 1952 with Arne Jacobsen’s Ant chair. The collaboration between the architect and Fritz Hansen officially originated in 1934 — that year, Jacobsen created his inaugural piece for the manufacturer, the solid beechwood Bellevue chair for a restaurant commission. The Ant chair, however, was the breakthrough.

With assistance from his then-apprentice Verner Panton, Jacobsen designed the Ant chair for the cafeteria of a Danish healthcare company called Novo Nordisk. The chair was composed of a seat and backrest formed from a single piece of molded plywood attached, in its original iteration, to three tubular metal legs. Its silhouette suggests the shape of the insect’s body, and the lightweight, stackable chair and its biomorphic form became an international hit.

Jacobsen followed with more plywood successes, such as the Grand Prix chair of 1957. The following year he designed the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen and its furnishings, including the Egg chair and the Swan chair. Those two upholstered pieces, with their lush, organic frames made of fiberglass-reinforced polyurethane, have become the two chairs most emblematic of mid-20th-century cool. Moreover, the Egg and Swan led Fritz Hansen to fully embrace new man-made materials, like foam, plastic and steel wire used to realize the avant-garde creations of later generations of designers with whom the firm collaborated, such as Piet Hein, Jørn Utzon (the architect of the Sydney Opera House) and Verner Panton. If the Fritz Hansen of 1872 would not now recognize his company, today’s connoisseurs certainly do.

Find a collection of vintage Fritz Hansen tables, lounge chairs, sofas and other furniture on 1stDibs.