The Egg Chair

 Jacobsen was interested in the idea of "total design", often including clauses in his contract: "Professor Jacobsen should undertake as much as possible of the landscape design and the design of fixtures and fittings."  This attention to detail and harmonious design led to some of the better known designs of the modern era. 

From his AJ cutlery/flatware, to his doorknobs and watches, and of course what he is most famous for his furniture designs featured below.   This attention to detail and total design packages are probably best exemplified in his architecture at The Royal Hotel from 1956-61 in Copenhagen and St Catherine’s College.

(1952) The Ant

The chair takes advantage of techniques from theaircraft industry .

Inspired by Ray and Charles Eames designs.

In order to press the double shell as one piece the chair had to be narrow in the transition between seat and back. 

Originally onstructed with 3 legs to ensure the stability ,later a four-legged variant was developed for Rodovre town hall.

Materials:
Form-moulded, laminated veneer with a tubular steel frame.  The chair itself consists of 9 transversed layers of veneer with 2 layers of linen glued-in. Model 3100 has 3 legs in mirror chromed steel. Model 3101 has 4 in mirror or satin chromed steel.

Dimensions:
W:19 x D:19 x H:30.25, SH:17.25".
Weight: 4 kg.

(1958) The Swan

The Swan was a technologically innovative chair in 1958.  Designed for the Royal Hotel in Copenhagen.

Materials:
A moulded coherent shell of synthetic material on an aluminium star base. A layer of cold foam covers the shell, which is covered by a choice Kvadrat-fabric or leather upholstery in a wide range of colours, with a swivel base in steel.

DImensions:
W:76 x D:68 x SH:75 cm (H:31 x W:30 x D:27, SH:29.5")
 

Interested in learning more about the Swan chair? her is a resource site dedicated to the design-swan-chair.com

 (1955) Series 7

Part of the Series 7 group, which was awarded a Grand Prix at the 1957 Milan Triennale. 

The series includes:

chairs with arms
swivel chairs on castors and a
pedestal chair 

Materials:
Molded maple plywood seat with tubular steel base.

Dimensions:
19"w x 20.5"d x 30"h (50 x 52 x 78 cm, SH: 46,5 cm).

Interested in learning more abou the Series7 chair?  Series7chair.com

(1965) Oxford Chair

The Oxford chair series for office, meeting and conference use was originally designed for St. Catherine College in Oxford.

The chair originally made in the tall version in teak with form-moulded wooden base and as a prototype with armrests and all-wood frame.

Available in cloth or leather in a range of colours with a swivel base in steel, in both a tall and a short version and with or without armrests and/or sheels.

Cylina	Flatware	Lighting
Clocks	Watches	To see a complete list of these designs, visit our post on Arne Jacobsen Objects.

Here is a listing of a few lesser known Arne Jacobsen furniture designs:

Here are a few videos of  arne jacobsen designs in action.  If any of your own egg chairs need some prime time exposure.  Contact me and I will place the video here.

A Euromaxx program about the danish designer Arne Jacobsen. recorded in (and around) Copenhagen.

Fritz Hansen "Egg" chair with "Random" shelving from MDF Italia

1958 Arne Jacobsen Egg Chair

Quick Facts + Links:

+ Born in Copenhagen.

+ Graduated from the Academy of Arts, Copenhagen in 1928

+ Won a silver medal for a chair design at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.  This is also  where he discovers the work of  Le Corbusier’s.

+ Spent two years in Sweden as an exile during the war. 

+ Nickname the "Fat man"

+ In 1956 Designs the Egg and Swan chairs as well as the Aj Cutlery all for his latest building the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen

+ His chair the Series 7, was used as a prop for the famous Christine Keeler’s nude portrait, and the Profumo Affair.

+ Arne Jacobsen Died in Copenhagen 1971

Biography:

As an architect and industrial designer, Jacobsen became one of the most influential Danish architect and designer of the 20 th century .  Known as much for his furniture design: such as Swan, Egg and Series 7 chairs as he is for his famous works of architecture: SAS Royal Hotel and St Catherine’s College in Oxford.

Overall Jacobsen did not engage in  theory-building as did many of his colleagues in the modernist movement, He was heavily influenced by their designs early on and was inspired by the work of Mies-Corbu-and Charles and Ray Eames. Jacobsen tended to be able to stray from the pure modernist as once was quoted as saying  "You can always see a thing from two sides, if only one has a little imagination"

Born in Copenhagen in 1902, Arne Jacobsen worked as an apprentice bricklayer until he began his studies at the Royal Academy of Art in 1924. This background working with materials would prove to play an important role in his work  later on.

As a student, Jacobsen went to Paris in 1925 for an International Exhibition of Arts Décoratifs School, where he won the silver medal for his chair design. Here is where he was first introduced to the work of Le Corbusier in the L ’spirit of Modernism pavilion.  Before he finished his studies Jacobsen  visited Berlin, where he learned of the rationalist architecture of Mies Van Der Rohe and Walter Groupius. Their work had an impact on some of his earlier project completed in Denmark.

In 1929, the 27-year-old Jacobsen entered his life-size model of the”House of the Future” (designed with his partner, Flemming Lassen) which won them 1st prize in the Academic Architects’ Association’s Housing and Building Fair.  The structure was temporarily erected that year at the Housing and Building Exhibition in Copenhagen. Some of the highlighs of their house design included:

Windows that rolled down like car windows,
Conveyor tube for the mail
Helicopter Pad on the roof
Kitchen stocked with ready-made meals.

The project was eventually dismantled, but today a group of Danish Architects are attempting to rebuild the ”House of the Future” .

Architectural commissions disappeared during World War II, Being Jewish, Jacobsen was in danger of the Nazi occupation of Denmark. In 1943 he fled to neighboring Sweden. Two years later he returned to Denmark in time for the countries urgent need new residential and public buildings.  This allowed Jacobsen to design some of his bigger commisions.

During 1950’s, Jacobsen after seeing some of the work of Charles and Ray Eames and their bent plywood designs became interested in product designs again.  But Jacobsen,  considered himself foremost an architect. ”He didn’t call himself a designer; he didn’t even like the word,” said Scott Poole, a professor of architecture at Virginia Tech 

By the end of 1950’s, Jacobsen was given the opportunity to put his thories into a comprehensive design package, with the Ari terminal SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen. He designed almost every element of the building, from its glassy exterior structure to the Cylinda ashtrays, AJ Handles and the dining rooms flatware  This is also the birthplace of the Swan and Egg chairs.  This building was not met with the kindest reception and Jacobsen has said the following about the hotel:

"Well, yes, they call it the punch card, and it’s funny, for that is actually what it looks like when the windows are open on a hot summer’s day. It has been called a lot of different things. Svend Erik Møller called it the ‘glass cigarbox’. And many people thought it was a terribly ugly building, and many may still think so. At least, it came in first when they held a competition for the ugliest building in Copenhagen."

Arne Jacobsen when asked to reflect on some of his career said that proportion is one of the main factors in his work, he was on to say "The proportion is exactly what makes the beautiful ancient Egyptian temples … And if we look at some of the most admired buildings of the Renaissance and Baroque, we noticed that they were all well-proportioned. Here is the basic thing.  You can see a complete list and corresponding images of his work the-egg-chair.com/arne-jacobsen-architecture

Awards + Recognition: Arne Jacobsen

 + In 1927 he even won a gold medal with an academy project for a national open air museum situated in Klampenborg, Bellevue.

+ 1930 he won a design competition entitled ‘The House of the Future

+ 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs, where he won a silver medal for a chair design

+ 1966 Jacobsen wins the competition to design the new National Bank of Denmark

+ Won the competition for the office Buildings for the Hamburg Power station (1970)

+ The Cylinda-line has won awards from The Danish Society of Industrial Design and The American Institute of Interior Designers.

Additional Resources | Interviews | Articles:

ARTICLE: Independent.co.uk

ARTICLE: Design Museum

MOMA: Design Collection

Design Addict: Biography

Arne Jacobsen.com

Fritz Hansen.com

Wikipedia: Arne Jacobsen

 image credit: drewleavy

Fast food chain McDonald’s may have to change its plans for revamping some of its European stores after being accused of "piracy" by Frtiz Hansen.

From the TIME article
"McDonald’s approached us some six months ago to help revitalize and revamp their European restaurants," Fritz Hansen CEO Jacob Holm told TIME in Copenhagen. "We developed Arne Jacobsen chairs in special colors and began deliveries." In particular Avanzi and McDonald’s chose The Egg and The Seven chairs, two of Jacobsen’s most iconic creations. Jacobsen, who died in 1971, contracted Fritz Hansen to be the sole licensed manufacturer of his designs in 1934, meaning nobody else can make an original Egg (created in 1958) or Seven (1955). Approximately 2,500 of those chairs have already been sold to McDonald’s, according to Holm. "But," he says, "we discovered that terrible copies of our furniture were also being used in the U.K. That is unacceptable. We simply will not work with people who use originals where they have to and copies elsewhere, legal or otherwise."

According  to copyright law’s in the United Kingdom, McDonald’s is technically doing nothing wrong. Since the U.K. rights on the designs of the chairs have expired, which holds that the rights on a design last a maximum of 25 years, instead of 70 as in much of Europe — British furniture stores and websites are legitimately selling copies of the Egg chair for a fraction of the original price.

28 McDonald’s in the U.K. that were refurbished in 2006 and fitted with all original Fritz Hansen chairs. By the end of this year, another 100 restaurants will have gone through a "re-image": some using all originals, some using reproductions and some using a combination of both. "While the reproduction chairs are naturally very similar to the original design, there are differences," says Homer. "No attempt has been made to ‘pass off’ reproduction chairs as originals in any references or labeling."

"The fact that McDonald’s has chosen to use pirated copies is even more surprising since the company itself is legendary across the world in pursuing trademark and copyright suits to safeguard its product and name," Mr Holm said.

McDonald’s admitted using chairs that were similar-looking reproductions of the iconic designs, but said the company had not acted improperly.
 

Additional Articles covering the story:

Telegraph.co.uk

TIME

NYTIMES

An abstract print of Jacobsens City Hall tower in the city of Aarhus, Denmark.  created by the artist Ashjom Lonwig, you can see more of Ashjom’s work HERE.

They sell the prints at ART.com and have them ranging from 8×10’s for $14.99 to 20×24’s for $39.99

Wikipedia article on the city,
Flickr search for more images of the tower.

Here is a photo of the tower courtesy of iznogut and a creative commons license.