Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Scandinavian home furniture creators

By Camille Small


Scandinavian home furniture makers have created a lot of wonderful home furniture during the 1930s to the 1960s. Much of this furniture has grown to be extremely popular within the last number of years. In Denmark alone, more than 10.000 pieces were crafted over the last few decades.

Today much of this furniture is very well well-known worldwide and is still being produced. The Ox and Y-Chair by Hans J. Wegner, the Swan Chair by Arne Jacobsen are fine examples. This article will look at the history of the Scandinavian home furniture market and the reasons for it's popularity.

Scandinavian home furniture design is primarily considered as being minimalist and functional. IKEA furniture is a good example of this. From a functional viewpoint, furniture should be made for regular use and also be affordable to everyday people. This idea for functionalism never really started to become popular with regards to Scandinavian home furniture, as it was also expensive at the beginning. The reason for this was because of the high-quality and the expensive materials used to make the furniture.

If we consider how this furniture was initially made, it was either industrially manufactured or constructed manually. An illustration of a designer who generally created hand crafted furniture is Kaare Klint. The Swan Chair by Arne Jacobsen is an illustration of a chair that was industrially created. The Swan Chair ended up being industrially made because it was extremely difficult to make the shape of the chair manually with the necessary materials. If we discuss industrial production it is essential to emphasize that we don't mean large-scale production as we know it today. Within the period of the 1930s to the 1960s, industrial creation basically meant that the furniture was machine made.

Referring to Scandinavian designs from around the 1930 to 1960 period, it's important not only to look at popular chairs. The designers in this period also created lots of other remarkable products which are still extremely popular these days. The Globe made by Poul Henningsen, and wooden toys created by Kay Bojesen are fine examples. Arne Jacobsen is yet another designer who actually produced more than just chairs. When he designed the Royal SAS Hotel he created the entire interior himself, from knives to chairs.

But what made the home furniture from this period so popular? This is likely a result of the smooth lines and sometimes interesting designs which makes it so appealing. Add this with lots of colors, fabrics, and good quality finish, you now have a lot of reasons why the Scandinavian home furniture from this period is very well-liked.




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