Original Pen & Pencil Drawing Finn Juhl, 1952

Name: Original Pen & Pencil Drawing Finn Juhl, 1952
Brand: Finn Juhl
Price: 5148.7 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

This is an example of a hand-drawn scaled drawing of the ‘Top of New Dining Table (DRW.79)’, 17th December 1952. The drawings depicts the top view of what seems to be a ‘simplified’ version of Finn Juhl’s Silver Table, or more commonly known as the ‘Judas Table’ for its use of 30 pieces of Silver inlayed into the leaves of the Dining Table. The design of the table in the drawing takes on a rectangular shape and Juhl notes that it would be made of a mixture of both Walnut and Sycamore wood, as opposed to the Brazilian Rosewood that he had used for the Oval ‘Judas Table’.Juhl wrote to Hollis Baker, owner of Baker Furniture on the drawing as a means of replying to Mr Baker’s letters:“Dear Hollis, this was the best, I could suggest. At home this more reasonable because of the oval shape. How it is in fact too simple to need the decoration.Kindest regards – I will answer your two last letters very soon, thank you Finn” – Dec. 17, 52Finn Juhl’s relationship with Baker Furniture and the US design circles was formed by the prolific art collector and director of the Industrial Design Department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA); Edgar Kaufmann Jr. An article written about Juhl by Kaufmann drew the attention of Mr Hollis Baker, a Furniture manufacturer in Michigan, and led to a collection of furniture designed by Juhl for Baker Furniture. The collaboration would snowball into events marking the era of ‘Danish Modern’, and an export boom of Danish design to the United States.

Creator:

Finn Juhl (Artist)

Dimensions:

Height: 16.15 in (41 cm)Width: 23.23 in (59 cm)Depth: 0.79 in (2 cm)

Style:

Modern (Of the Period)

Materials and Techniques:

Paper

Place of Origin:

Denmark

Period:

1950-1959

Date of Manufacture:

1952

Condition:

Minor fading.

Seller Location:

London, GB

Reference Number:

1stDibs: LU891031751062

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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.