Finn Juhl 45 Chairs by Niels Vodder

The FJ45 was Finn Juhl's earliest major success, displayed for the public in late 1945 just after the War had ended and when Finn Juhl opened his own design studio. Before this he had worked for Vilhelm Lauritzen's studio designing furniture and some of those designs from shortly before this show Finn Juhl working out some of the ideas that he made into a masterpiece in the 45 chair. Per Finn Juhl, when he designed the 45 he had started too late in designing all the furniture for Vodder’s booth that year, so it all had to be done in 4 days. The 45 was designed over a span of 4 hours without any prior sketching, although he had been thinking about it for a long time.

Finn Juhl revolutionized danish furniture design by not referencing historical antecedents and with a subtle visual separation between the bearer (wooden frame) and the borne (the upholstery). It is frequently understood solely within the aesthetic dimension, but in fact there were industrial design problems that it solved and this lesser known side of Finn Juhl as an industrial designer is probably the real story of how it got its form. How do you efficiently store finished frames and then send the upholstery frame off to the upholsterer when a customer has selected fabric? First the designer separates the upholstered parts into units isolated from the wooden from. Then the designer considers whether the wooden frame can be efficiently stored. So the two side frame assemblies of the FJ45 can be glued, sanded, oiled and stored flat. A stack of L-shaped seat frames can be stacked. When a customer purchases one and selects a fabric the seat frame alone, instead of the whole chair, can be sent to the upholsterer. Once upholstered, the seat frame was glued between the two side assemblies. The joinery where the lateral stretcher and struts meets the side frames is a simple butt joint requiring glue, clamping and wiping off any excess squeezed out glue. The intersection of the fabric and wood reveals one final clever trick. There was potential for glue to squeeze out on the edge of the fabric or an otherwise slightly imperfect meeting of wood parts, so a welt cuff was used to wrap the intersections. Because the fabric choice was unpredictable and would have to be sewn into welt by the upholsterer and returned with the seat to be attached after assembly, undyed leather was chosen instead as a natural complement to the dark woods of the frame. This was the same choice that Finn Juhl would make in 1949 with the armrests of the Chieftain chair.

In speaking of the 45, Finn Juhl mentions that the disjunction between the bear and the borne in in the 45 was incomplete and in later chairs he completed it, with the seat and backrest entirely floating, like the FJ48. What really makes the FJ45 magical, however is that the disjunction looks complete while in fact the seat frame is an integral part of the structure. It is a brilliant illusion. The appearance is that the upper part of the armrest supports the backrest, yet it is incredibly thin and delicate. The reality, as he admits, is that the backrest actually supports that last segment of the armrest.

In the history of Danish Modern the FJ45 is the chair that everything else is reference to somehow. Often that reference is a somewhat direct comparison to the separation between bearer and borne, or another similar industrial design solution to the same problem in the same materials. Or sometimes it is a reference through being the proper juxtaposition for an entire space to work, (a space that contains a FJ45 or some derivation thereof). There are other chairs that are rarer, more expensive even but nothing as crucial to the entire essence of the movement artistically and industrially.

In 1964 Finn Juhl spoke about the design of the FJ45 and the original upholstery choice. Then he wanted to emphasize the contrast between the supporting wooden frame and upholstered parts by also emphasizing the contrast between the fixed upholstery and the loose cushion. Often then the backrest and seat bottom were done in a gray with the seat in blue-green. I have chosen similar contrasting colors, with an even lighter tone behind the teak to make it stand out, and a more emphatic bright colored cushion. (By 1964 he had changed his mind an preferred the chair best in one uniform dark color).

The story of the Niels Vodder brands on these chairs is fascinating and unusual. By the 1960s, it appears that Niels Vodder had decided to start branding the cross stretchers in advance of the final assembly of the chairs. I imagine this made sense time-wise, once the brand was hot use it! So if you survey the 45s out there you will see many examples were the brand is partially covered by the struts. (This is because the struts do not join into a socket as you might expect, but are actually dowel jointed onto the flat surface of the stretcher, resulting in a large area between those two small dowel holes for the cabinetmaker to apply the brand and some of it that will be covered by the ends of the struts). So originally these two chairs were branded. A small part of the original brand still exists on one of the chairs above the strut. On both, the brand was chiseled off, and that one little spot was harder to get to and not so obvious so it was left behind. At first glance the fact that the brand was removed might seem surprising, but in the context of Niels Vodder and Illums Bolighus it is not at all surprising. Marking was a part of the marketing of the pieces and intended to create a reference for the buyer to return to buy more furniture. Cabinetmakers were called such, instead of factories, because they sold directly to the public and did not sell wholesale to retailers. So when the lines started blurring in the 1950s, marking was a point of contention and negotiation. Illums Bolighus did not want buyers to go around them to Neils Vodder and Illums had a much more robust presence amongst buyers than Niels Vodder did. So Illums negotiated some sort of contract with Niels Vodder and you can see the results in this estate of furniture. High volume pieces, like the FJ45 lounge chair and the FJ55 side chair were not supposed to be marked because those sales were particularly important to Illums. Low volume pieces like the Chieftain or the Silver/Judas table were marked. (In fact the Judas table was so unimportant to Illums that it was not in their catalog). The FJ40 appears to have been exclusively retailed by Illums and it was not a huge seller, not very valuable to anyone, and Illums advertising it in the catalog created the value, so they negotiated that it be unmarked. The last part of the context is that often you will see Finn Juhl pieces marked with the Illums tag nailed right over top of “Niels Vodder” in the brand and this is again an effect of some clause in that contract. So in this context we can begin to understand that accidentally the upholstered frames from this particular order got glued into marked stretchers. And then either Niels Vodder rectified the mistake with a chisel, or the employee at Illums who nailed the tags on was feeling energetic that day and decided on a complete removal. So all in all, the marking is a very special situation that lets you still see a little bit of it and also understand something of the world these chairs were created in!

Designer: Finn Juhl
Maker: Niels Vodder
Model: FJ45 per the Niels Vodder catalog, 1956
Design Date: 1945
Date of Production: circa 1964-65
Original Retailer: Illums Bolighus, Copenhagen
Price: on asking