It's summer time...

... holiday time, time to travel! What about a vintage design hotel in Prague ?

In the center of old Prague, Hotel Sax has been developping a vintage project. 

Lobby, breakfast & dining rooms and every room or suite have an original appearance : you are surrounded with the atmosphere, the shapes and the colors of the design you prefer. In the 1950s, furniture pieces by Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson, Hans Wegner, Gio Ponti or Poul Henningsen ; for the 1960s, Panton, Aarnio, Saarinen... but it's also up to you to choose the 1970s... 

Let's travel through design history of the mi-20th Century !

Amazing, isn't it?

For more please see : 
http://195.122.208.4/saxcz/_new/index.php?menu=vintagedesign&lang=2
http://www.hotelsax.cz

Trendy Scandinavian mood...

The trendy "Smallable" website presents pieces coming from an interesting Parisian showroom : 

In this gallery, located in Le Marais, rue Vieille du Temple, you can feel the modernist design spirit, inspired by Scandinavian forms and materials. Stylist, collector and designer Gaëtane Raguet features original designof the 50's to the 70's. She also presents her own "vintage inspired" creations : wallprints, seating, graphic lighting and other contemoraray accessories.

For more, please see :

http://www.smallable.com/124_One-Nine-Six-One

http://www.oneninesixonegallery.com

This print could be our flag...

(available : http://www.imagekind.com/MidCentury-Modern-Collection-Neutral_art?IMID=948a5af7-4d97-4970-85be-a3f4398bee1a)

"I just wrapped up a personal project that’s been on my backburner for some time, an illustrated collection of my favourite iconic mid-century modern furniture. Included are designs by Eames, Jacobsen, van der Rohe, le Corbusier, and more, forty pieces in all. It started as a project to develop my editorial illustration – to find a way of working with a certain character, tone & simplicity – for when things need to be communicated more abstractly than with the objectivity of technical illustration", explains James Provost, an artist/illustrator, specialized in highly detailed and accurate illustrations of science and technology subjects.

And here are some closeups of the illustrations :

"Fried Egg Chair", Hans Olsen, c. 1960

"Egg chair", Jacobsen, 1958

"Ball chair", Aarnio, 1963

Panton

For more : http://jamesprovost.com/about/

A colorful Dutch desk at the bend of a path...

Last week-end, we were wandering through "Marché Paul Bert", in the pittoresque "puces" of Saint-Ouen to find Jacobsen's pieces, when, at the bend of a path, we admired this beautiful desk, one of the first designed by Cees Braakman in 1951.

(Marché Paul Bert, allée 5, stand N. 212)

Cees Braakman (1917-1995) was one of the most influentual designers of the Netherlands. He started his career very young already at the age of 17 learning the basics of furniture production. After the second world war, he was sent to the US to study American design and production processes. There he was particularly inspired by the works of the  Eames at Herman Miller. 

The clean, efficient and forward-thinking designs of Braakman paved the way for success for the manufacturer Pastoe during the 1950's and 1960's he worked for from his very beginnnings. Some of Braakman's most reknown designs includes a pioneering series of modular cabinets that was based on self-assembly and could be combined in endless ways and in various materials, as well as the 'U+N' series created during the 1960's. 

In love with the sculptural "Baker Sofa"...

The "Baker Sofa" is known as one of the most beautiful sofas by the hand of Finn Juhl (1912-1989), designed in 1951 for the company Baker Furniture in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This beautiful sofa is in two parts with an upholstered body on a light construction of wood (walnut or teak/ wool upholstery) - a typical example of how Finn Juhl divided the elements in order to create lightness visually as well as constructively. In fact it gives a wonderful idea of the designer's formgiving ability, showing one of his most dynamic designs with its curious backrest seeming almost as though to float on air ( C & P Fiell, "Landmarks of Chair Design", Fill Publishing, 2010). Its sculptural forms are inspired by the modern free art, which interested Finn Juhl very much in his design.

Wish I could find a vintage one...

In 2009, the Danish Company OneCollection (http://www.onecollection.com) reintroduced it to the market. And 59 years after its birth the Baker Sofa actually got an international design award, receiving, on January, the WallPaper Design Award 2010 in the category "Best reissues" !

Finn Juhl, who is regarded as the father of the Danish Design he contributed to introduce in the USA when he became world famous after he designed the Trusteeship Council in the UN building, was born at Frederiksberg in 1912 as son of an autoritarian cloth merchant. Originally he wanted to become an art historian but his father persuaded him to join The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture after his graduation in 1930. During the Summer of 1934 Finn Juhl had a job with the architect Vilhelm Lauritzen, but he resigned in 1945 and started his own drawing office. 

Finn Juhl was not an educated furniture architect, but an all round building’s architect, something he often emphasized. Nevertheless, it was the furniture which made him known both in Denmark and abroad. He designed his first furniture for his own apartment and they were manufactured by the young carpenter Niels Vodder, with whom he got a long lasting and fruitful co-operation. 

In 1937 Finn Juhl debuted in public as a furniture architect at the exhibition of the Copenhagen Cabinetmaker’s Guild at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, and right from the beginning his furniture was a subject of discussion. The furniture architects, who were known, all had either a carpenter’s education or were educated by Kaare Klint at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture. But not Finn Juhl, who was self taught and who broke the craftsman like traditions within the design of furniture. 

Even though there was a lack of acknowledgement to begin with of Finn Juhl’s furniture design, he, ten years after his debut, got his furniture in a series production at the company Bovirke and later with France & Son, and others. From 1951 the company Baker Furniture Inc. in Grand Rapids, Michigan produced his furniture in USA. In 1946, when Finn Juhl was at the peak of his career as a furniture designer, he got his first big interior assignment, Bing and Grøndahl’s store at Amagertorv in Copenhagen. This became later on one of his main works and was awarded with the Eckersberg- Medal in 1947. 

In 1937 Finn Juhl married the dentist Inge-Marie Skaarup  and when the highly art interested couple in 1942 were building their new house at Kratvænget in Ordrup, it was decorated with works of the Danish art painters of the time : Lundstrøm, Richard Mortensen, Eigill Jacobsen, Robert Jacobsen and others. Finn Juhl always saw his furniture as a part of the expression of the room and thought that furniture, handicraft and free art should created a completeness of the house, his own house being a school example of this idea. 

(Photos : arcspace.com)

For more please see : 

Finn Juhl by NoCollection:http://www.onecollection.com/FinnJuhl 

Finn Juhl's house : http://www.ordrupgaard.dk/topics/collection-and-architecture/finn-juhl's-house.aspx

And Finn Juhl on obliqdesign : www.obliqdesign.com

Henningsen, Kjaerholm, Juhl and Wegner at Design Miami/Basel

Design Miami/Basel is opening today in Basel, a day ahead of ArtBasel. 

"Danks Mobelkunst Gallery" will show wonderful pieces of some our favorite designers Poul Henningsen, Finn Juhl, Poul Kjaerholm and Hans Wegner.

http://www.designmiami.com/design-galleries/

Finn Juhl, Sofa and easy chair, 1950
Teak and fabric ; 146 x 78 x 80 cm / 83 x 78 x 71 cm
Photography Courtesy Of: Brahl Fotografi 

Finn Juhl, "Chieftain chair",1949
Rosewood and leather; 102 x 94 x 91 cm
Photography Courtesy Of: Dansk Møbelkunst Gallery 

For Finn Juhl in our collection, please see : www.obliqdesign.com

Do you really want to work today?

Do you really want to work today ?... 

So let's have a seat in front of this incredible desk and  be inspired by Nanna Ditzel. 

The painting is a Pierre Fichet, 1958

This Nanna Ditzel's "93" writing desk, designed circa 1958 and made in Copenhagen by Soren Willadsen, is one of her most desirable pieces. With its extraordinary recessed pulls over Y-shaped legs, it can be found in a three- or a four-drawer version, in teak, rosewood or oak.

Brasilian rosewood :

Oak :

Teak :

For Nanna Ditzel in our collection, please see : www.obliqdesign.com

A Belgian dream...

One of the Belgian architect Bruno Erpicum's keywords is : "Esthetics are defined by proportion". It fits so wonderfully this splendid 400 sqm. house  he transformed and renovated in the suburbs of Brussels in 2004. A peaceful space called "Les heures claires".

(Photo : http://www.erpicum.org)

Inside modernist Danish furniture participates the profound harmony of this area where natural light enters from everywhere making interior and exterior play together.


Between the two grey sofas, two Poul Kjaerholm's PK 22 easy chairs  :

(Photo : http://www.erpicum.org)

(Photos : Elle Decor Italia, 2010, N.6)

In the dining room, four Hans Wegner's Ch 24 chairs (1949, ed. by Carl Hansen & Son) :

(Photo : http://www.erpicum.org)

And to watch TV, the famous "Chieftain" armchair designed by Finn Juhl (1949)

(Photo : http://www.evermotion.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=76113)

For Wegner, Kjaerholm and Juhl in our collection, please see : www.obliqdesign.com

Designers Kaare Klint & Poul Kjaerholm in Zurich : the roots of danish design

Remember our last post on Poul Kjærholm ? 

To be fully convinced of his importance, let's read about a show in Zurich...

Pool Kjærholm, 'Shell chair', 1953

http://www.wallpaper.com/gallery/interiors/dansk-mobel-kunst/17051897)

Poul Kjærholm, PK 41

 (http://disdanishdesignjournalspring2010.blogspot.com/2010/01/12910-lecture-reflection-from-where.html) 

Kaare Klint "Propeller Stool", 1927 

( Rud. Rasmussen, stained oak and leather)

(http://www.danish-furniture.com/designers/kaare-klint/#kaare-klint-propeller-chair)

                    

Danks Mobelkunst gallery, the specialist gallery for the 20th century Danish furniture and applied artworks (http://www.dmk.dk), relocated its flagship showroom in Zurich, Switzerland. For the opening, the first exhibition there, from the 28th of May to the 19th of June, is a retrospective honouring Poul Kjærholm and the designer, whose lectures he followed at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts when he was a student, Kaare Klint (1888-1954). 

As Daven Wu points in Wallpaper, "widely acknowledged as two of Denmark's finest furniture designers, the juxtaposition of Klint and Kjærholm in a single space seems, at first look, a little disconnected especially in terms of their material of choice : Klint worked almost exclusively with wood, while Kjærholm championed steel. 

But common threads emerge quickly. Klint taught at Copenhagen's Royal Academy of Fine Arts where his students included the younger Kjærholm who would, in turn, become a lecturer there one day too. More importantly, throughout their prolific careers, both cleaved closely to the form follows function school of thought, while blending often complicated traditional craft techniques with a distinctly modern visual DNA. 

In the simply named 'Klint + Kjærholm' show, Dansk Møbelkunst has curated a small but perfectly proportioned visual feast of the pair's best works, including Klint's collapsible table and 'Faaborg' chair; and Kjærholm's iconic 'Shell' chair. Seen side by side for the first time, it doesn't take long to realise that the works of both designers are defined less by the alleged differences in their styles than by their clearly defined commitment to the proportionate form."

(http://www.wallpaper.com/interiors/kaare-klint-and-poul-kjaerholm-show-zurich/4580)

For more on the links between these two designers and their influence, please read : http://disdanishdesignjournalspring2010.blogspot.com/2010/01/12910-lecture-reflection-from-where.html