Self-Taught Furniture Designer
Since his early years, Finn Juhl had been interested in fine arts and initially dreamed of becoming an art historian. However, his father wouldn’t allow him to pursue a career in the arts, so instead, Finn Juhl enrolled at the Department of Architecture at the Royal Danish Academy of Arts in Copenhagen. He began his studies in the 1930s, a transformative period in furniture design when modern styles began to emerge. During this time, he became acquainted with some of the era’s most influential functionalists, including the prominent architect Vilhelm Lauritzen, who hired him at his architectural office in 1934.
At Vilhelm Lauritzen’s office, Finn Juhl worked on major projects such as the Radio House and Copenhagen Airport, and the work gradually took up so much of his time that he never completed his studies. Despite this, he gained significant recognition for his work – internationally as well. In 1942 he received the honor of becoming a member of the Academic Architect Society, and later in life, he became a visiting professor at the Institute of Design in Chicago. One of the absolute highlights of his career was designing the interior for the Trusteeship Council Chamber at the United Nations Headquarters in New York between 1951 and 1952. By the time he gained recognition as a furniture designer, he would always refer to himself as self-taught.
Designing for the Living Body
Like other modernist pioneers, Finn Juhl started from scratch without role models or inherited limitations. But contrary to his modernist contemporaries, with their streamlined, scaffolding-like structures, he aimed at a more organic and natural form. His ambition was to create furniture that had movement and life, and therefore, many of his designs appear almost as if they are animated.
Since Finn Juhl was not trained in furniture design, he ensured proper proportions by measuring his own body and analyzing how the individual components of a piece of furniture should support and carry the human body. The potential strength of the material was utilized to the maximum – just like in nature’s own constructions. As Finn Juhl translated his ideas into daring, supple joinery where each element of the design flowed seamlessly into each other, he also put enormous demands on the cabinetmakers who were to produce the design.
In creating his furniture, he worked with two central elements: the carrying, and the carried. This is evident in several of his chairs and sofas, where the seat is subtly separated and elevated from the frame, creating a floating effect and a visual lightness. It is just one example of how Finn Juhl broke with conventional methods and drew inspiration from art.
Upholstery and Wood Work
During his first years at the Cabinetmakers’ Guild Exhibition, Finn Juhl primarily worked with fully upholstered furniture. For those familiar with Finn Juhl’s wooden furniture, it may seem surprising that he actually started with upholstered pieces. He later explained that this choice was due to the fact that he had little knowledge of either furniture construction or cabinetmaking in the beginning. Upholstered furniture allowed him to focus solely on the organic and sculptural shapes that would later become one of his trademarks. He could let master cabinetmaker Niels Vodder handle the wooden frame, while he focused on the external form of the furniture.
Contrary to many of his peers, Finn Juhl saw great potential in having modern furniture reflect modern art, and the Pelican Chair is a clear example of how he combined the ideals of functionalism with free art. A few years after his debut at the Cabinetmakers’ Guild Exhibition, he became increasingly interested in using wood as the main material in his designs, rather than hiding it under a layer of upholstery. When he designed the 45 Chair, his objective was to create a chair that was almost self-explanatory in its construction, making him one of the first to distinctly separate the upholstered areas from the wooden frame. The result was an elegant, floating expression that would come to define Finn Juhl.
