The Story Behind Hans Wegner’s Iconic Wishbone Chair Design

Original article posted at Architectural Digest by Hannah Martin.

At the Copenhagen Cabinetmakers’ Guild exhibition in 1947, Holger Hansen, son of cabinetmaker Carl Hansen, met Hans Wegner, a young designer making radical new furnishings: sleek forms inspired by the minimal designs of China’s Ming dynasty. Hansen’s family-run company, hoping to segue into serial manufacturing, took a chance on the young Dane two years later, putting five of his pieces into production by 1950. The firm still makes all of them today.

One chair, which some say was commissioned to compete with the ubiquitous Thonet café chair, became a fan favorite: the CH24, a.k.a. the Wishbone Chair (from $765 at Design Within Reach). With an ultra-simple hardwood silhouette that eliminated all nonessential material and a seat made from paper, spun to look like a rope (a Swedish invention during wartime, when sisal was scarce), it followed Wegner’s self-described “process of purification and of simplification.” This fall, Design Within Reach will debut a new version with a leather seat. 

Danish customers, though, were not immediately convinced. “They didn’t fit into a 1950s home,” observes Knud Erik Hansen, the firm’s current CEO. “Even my granddad, used to heavy mahogany, thought they looked like garden furniture.” But the Wishbone found a warm welcome over in sunny California and soon gained favor in Germany. In a few years, Danes came around, too, embracing a chair that became a hallmark of Danish modernism the world over.