PurplePrice Mag · · 2 min read
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Carl Hansen & Søn is the Danish company that makes some of the most famous furniture of Scandinavian modernism, above all Hans J. Wegner's Wishbone Chair. It is still a family business, now led by the founder's grandson, based on the island of Funen.
A workshop in Odense
On 28 October 1908 the cabinetmaker Carl Hansen opened his first workshop in Odense; in 1915 he opened a proper factory, specialising in bedroom furniture for the island's bourgeoisie. The crisis of the 1930s hit the company hard: in 1934 his son Holger Hansen took over and kept it afloat partly by making wooden cases for Singer sewing machines.
Hans J. Wegner and the Wishbone Chair
After the war a new generation of designers emerged in Denmark. In 1949 the salesman Ejvind Kold Christensen introduced Holger Hansen to Hans J. Wegner, whom the company asked for a high-quality chair that could be mass-produced. Wegner presented four models, CH22, CH23, CH24 and CH25, all put into production the following year. The CH24, the Wishbone Chair or Y Chair, with its Y-shaped back and woven paper-cord seat, was inspired by old Chinese chairs: it became Wegner's greatest commercial success and has never gone out of production. In the 1950s it alone accounted for more than half of the company's sales, helped by the success of Danish design in the United States.
Classics and contemporaries
After difficult years, from the 1990s renewed interest in Danish classics revived the company, which put many Wegner designs back into production. In 2002 Knud Erik Hansen, the founder's grandson, became sole owner, built a new factory in Aarup and pushed exports above half of turnover. Today the catalogue includes furniture by Kaare Klint, Arne Jacobsen, Ole Wanscher, Børge Mogensen and Poul Kjærholm, alongside contemporary designs such as those by the Japanese architect Tadao Ando, the studio EOOS and Naja Utzon Popov. In 2014, for the centenary of Wegner's birth, the company returned to the logo he himself had designed in 1950.
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