Danish Furniture Rise Andf Fall

Networks, Narratives, and New Markets: The Rise and Decline of Danish Modern
Furniture Design, 1930-1970

Author(s): Per H. Hansen
Source: The Business History Review , Autumn, 2006, Vol. 80, No. 3 (Autumn, 2006), pp.
449-483
Published by: The President and Fellows of Harvard College
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25097226
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Per H. Hansen
Networks, Narratives, and New Markets:

The Rise and Decline of Danish Modern
Furniture Design, 1930-1970
Histories of the rising popularity of Danish modern furniture
in both Denmark and the United States have traditionally
ascribed its success to the inherent beauty of Danish design.
This article argues that Danish modern furniture succeeded
for two other reasons. First, through the creation of powerful
narratives, or stories, that framed the way consumers made
sense of this furniture; and, second, through the calculated
development of a network of individuals and organizations
whose goal was to promote and legitimize these narratives.
In the 1950s,
drillard recognizedFrench
the powerfulsociologists
impact of languagelike Roland Barthes and Jean Bau
and narrative
on the production and promotion of fashion and other consumption
goods. "The object is nothing," declared Baudrillard. Roland Barthes
proclaimed, "Without discourse there is no total Fashion, no essential
Fashion.... [T]rue reason would in fact have us proceed from the insti
tuting discourse to the reality which it constitutes."1 These statements
are the starting point of my article, which is a critical examination of
the construction of Danish Modern as an international brand. I argue
that the international success of Danish Modern was due not to the es
sential beauty of the furniture, but to the concerted efforts of a social
network to assign certain meanings to concepts like "Danish Modern"
PER H. HANSEN is professor at the Centre for Business History, Copenhagen Business
School.
This article is based in part on my book, written in Danish: Da danske nwbler blev mod
erne: Historien om dansk mobeldesigns storhedstid [When Danish Furniture Went Modern:
A History of the Rise and Decline of Danish Furniture Design] (Copenhagen, 2006).
Mean Baudrillard, "The Ideological Genesis of Needs," in The Consumer Society Reader,
Douglas B. Holt and Juliet B. Schor, eds., The Consumer Society Reader (New York, 2000),
58-80, esp. 57, 70-71; Baudrillard, The Consumer Society; and Roland Barthes, The Fash
ion System (Berkeley, 1983; French ed., 1967), xi.
Business History Review 80 (Autumn 2006): 449-483. ? 2006 by The Pres

ident and Fellows of Harvard College.

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Per H. Hansen / 450
and "Danish Design." In other words, there was no Danish Modern until
it was constructed by a narrative.2
The insights that this approach yields are very different from the per
spective offered by the essentialist studies that have dominated the his
toriography of Danish Design. The history of Danish modern furniture
design has been told many times, but in spite of the economic impor
tance of the furniture industry to Denmark, few historians have consid
ered the causes of the sector's success.3 Because their focus has been on
design, they have concentrated on the aesthetics of the furniture and
the talents of individual designers to explain the popularity of Danish
Design.4 This has left the impression that Danish modern furniture was
able to "sell itself," in a sense, because it possessed the essential charac
teristics of beauty, simplicity, and functionality.
Kevin Davies has been an important exception to this traditional
outlook. He has argued that the version of the story that portrays the
architect Kaare Klint as the founding father of Danish Design is more
about marketing than about facts, a position with which I sympathize.5
In this article, I will argue that Danish modern furniture succeeded, first
in Denmark and then in the United States, for two main reasons.6 First,
21 am not arguing that the furniture, the producers, and the designers did not exist, but,
rather, that the categories and the meanings attached to them were constructed by the narrative.
3 The exceptions are Carl Erik Andresen, Dansk Mobelindustri, 1870-1950 (Arhus,
1996), whose analysis stops in 1950, exactly at the time of the international breakthrough of
Danish Design. Hans Chr. Johansen, Industriens vsekst og vilkar, 1870-1973 (Odense,
1988), on the other hand, argues that Danish furniture's success was driven by the demand
that grew out of increasing incomes and the opening of export markets (p. 299). Internation
ally, Michael Porter has pointed to design as a basis for Denmark's comparative advantage in
the production of household products and furnishings. Porter attributes the country's edge to
"a pool of university-trained designers" and "several professorships in furniture design." See
Michael Porter, The Competitive Advantage of Nations (London, 1990), 78,133.
4 The literature is abundant and mostly written by people who were part of the social net
work that I describe. See, for example, Arne Karlsen, Dansk Mobelkunst i det 20: arhundrede:
Bind 1-2 (Copenhagen, 1990); Esbjorn Hiort, Arkitekten Finn Juhl: Mobelkunst, Arkitektur,
Brugskunst (Copenhagen, 1990); Grete Jalk, ed., Dansk Mobelkunst gennem 40 ar: Koben
havns Snedkerlaugs Mobeludstillinger, 1927-1966, vols. 1-4 (Copenhagen, 1987); Mirjam
Gelfer-Jorgensen, Dansk Kunsthandvaerkfra 1850 til vor tid (Copenhagen, 1982); and Rig
mor Andersen, Kaare Klints Mobler (Copenhagen, 1979).
5 Kevin Davies, "Markets, Marketing and Design: The Danish Furniture Industry, c.
1947-65," Scandinavian Journal of Design History 9 (1999): 56-73. See also Kevin Davies,
"Scandinavian Furniture in Britain: Finmar and the U.K. Market, 1949-1952," Journal of
Design History 10 (2000): 39-52; and "Twentieth Century Danish Furniture Design and the
English Vernacular Tradition," Scandinavian Journal of Design History 7 (1997): 41-57;
Lesley Jackson, "A Positive Influence: The Impact of Scandinavian Design in Britain during
the 1950s," Scandinavian Journal of Design History 4 (1994): 41-60. Furthermore, Mette
Dalby, "Smag, forbrug og livsstil: optikker pa dansk mobeldesign, 1940-60" (M.A. thesis, In
stitut for Kunsthistorie, Arhus Universitet, 2001) shows the value of a branding approach to
Danish modern furniture.
6 Obviously the advent of Danish modern furniture came about for a variety of reasons.
Harvey Molotch employs the concept of "latch up" to describe the many conditions that must

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Networks, Narratives, and New Markets / 451
the creation of certain narratives framed the way consumers made sense
of this furniture; and, second, the development of a social network of in
dividuals and organizations promoted and legitimized these narratives.7
In the construction of Danish Modern as a concept, certain mean
ings were assigned to it that caused groups of consumers to prefer fur
niture that was designed and produced in Denmark over other types.
The concept of Danish Modern thus strongly resembles a brand, de
fined as a "concocted creation that is devised wholly to help sell and ...
has no life of itself." Brands are vehicles for differentiating between
products that are otherwise much alike; they offer consistency, and
they "help us define who we are ... and help us tell the world about our
selves." Put another way, brands assign certain meanings to products,
groups of products, and even to universities, nations, and monarchies.8
Narratives are an important part of assigning meaning to brands.9 That
Danish Modern has the characteristics of a brand was also evidenced by
the Federal Trade Commission's 1968 ruling that terms like "Danish"
and "Danish Modern" must be used only to describe furniture pro
duced in Denmark, while the phrase "Danish designed" could be ap
plied only to furniture designed in Denmark. In the same ruling, the
FTC noted that "Danish Modern" carries certain meanings, and it com
mented that consumers might prefer goods that are identified with a
foreign culture.10
Frames are conceptual structures that evoke certain associations in
the mind, in this case the meanings assigned to Danish Modern. The
production of frames and the representation of their contents can be
be fulfilled in order for a new design to appear. See Harvey Molotch, Where Stuff Comes
From (New York, 2003).
7 For an introduction to narrative and discursive analytical strategies, see Barbara Czar
niawska, Narratives in Social Science Research (Thousand Oaks, Calif., 2004); David M.
Boje, Narrative Methods for Organizational and Communication Research (Thousand
Oaks, Calif., 2001); and Niels Akerstrom Andersen, Discursive Analytical Strategies: Under
standing Foucault, Koselleck, Laclau and Luhman (Bristol, 2003).
8 Quotations are from Wally Olins, "How Brands are Taking over the Corporation," in The
Expressive Organization: Linking Identity, Reputation, and the Corporate Brand, eds. Maj
ken Schultz, Mary Jo Hatch, and Mogens Holten Larsen (Oxford, 2000). See also James B.
Twitchell, Branded Nation: The Marketing ofMegachurch, College Inc., and Museumworld
(New York, 2004). Was Danish Modern a brand? I will argue that it makes sense to use the
concept in a broader perspective when assigning specific meanings to things in order to cre
ate or add value, even to a monarchy. See John M. T. Balmer, Stephen A. Greyser, and Mats
Urde, "Monarchies as Corporate Brands," Harvard Business School Working Paper no. 05
002 (Aug. 2004).
9 On brands and narratives, see Douglas B. Holt, How Brands Become Icons: The Prin
ciples of Cultural Branding (Cambridge, Mass., 2004).
10 Federal Trade Commission, "Advisory Opinion Digest No. 301," Federal Trade Com
mission Advisory Opinion Digest, vol. 1-313 (1 June 1962-31 Dec. 1968): 234; and Ray O.
Werner et al., "Legal Developments in Marketing," Journal of Marketing 33 (2) 1969: 70-81.

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Per H. Hansen / 452
controlled by groups of individuals.11 Narratives can evoke frames, and

they too require interested agents.12 The prime movers behind the story
of Danish Modern were the members of a social network of designers,
producers, and their organizations.13
Without an elaborate, committed social network, Danish Design
would never have achieved such a considerable degree of success. The
network resembled what Roland Barthes and Grant McCracken call
"the fashion system," which transfers meaning from a "culturally con
stituted world to a consumer good [through] sources of meaning, agents
of transfer, and media of communication."14 This theoretical frame
work establishes a chain that links design and production to marketing
and retailing, and ultimately to consumption, while providing a way to
understand consumer choice. Thus a consumer's decision to buy a cer
tain piece of furniture, such as a chair, depends not only on the chair's
physical function and appearance but also on current fashion, the indi
vidual's own taste, and his or her need to signal possession of a distinc
tive lifestyle. For certain groups of consumers, the meanings assigned
to Danish modern furniture corresponded with the self-image that they
wanted?knowingly or unknowingly?to project. The consumer was able
to "draw on the ability of these goods to [represent distinctions] be
tween such cultural categories as class, status, gender, age, occupation
and lifestyle."15 The consumers purchased a narrative, in the form of a
desk or a chair, that they circulated to others by displaying the items in
their homes or offices. The values that were assigned to "Danish Mod
ern" stimulated demand among certain consumer groups, influencing
11 For an influential account of how language and metaphors shape the way we think, see
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago, 1980).
12 Czarniawska, in Narratives in Social Science, argues convincingly that narratives can
not be controlled exclusively by the actors. However, in this case, the network was remark
ably successful in doing so for a long period of time.
13 Regarding social networks, see Mark Granovetter, "Economic Action and Social Struc
ture: The Problem of Embeddedness," American Journal of Sociology 91, no. 3 (1985): 418
510. See also Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network
Theory (New York, 2005).
14 Grant McCracken, "Culture and Consumption: A Theoretical Account of the Structure
and Movement of the Cultural Meaning of Consumer Goods," Journal of Consumer Re
search 13, no. 1 (1986): 76. The concept of a "fashion system" was originally conceived by
French semiologist Roland Barthes in 1967. See Roland Barthes, The Fashion System (New
York, 1983).
15 McCracken, Culture and Consumption, 77-78; and Olins, "How Brands are Taking
over the Corporation." This movement of meaning from designers and producers to con
sumers is not a one-way street, however. Regina Lee Blaszczyk, in Imagining Consumers:
Design and Innovation from Wedgwood to Corning (Baltimore, 2000), has argued that pro
ducers pay serious attention to consumers' preferences, which are conveyed through "fashion
intermediaries," and therefore that designs are also influenced by a "bottom-up" process
whereby meanings are transmitted by consumers to designers and producers.

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their tastes, and thus their preferences.16 Therefore, it is important to

understand these narratives.
Two Subnarratives of Danish Furniture Design
Scientific Design: The Klint Subnarrative. In 1924 Kaare Klint

was appointed to the position of reader in furniture design at the Royal
Academy of Arts in Denmark, where he later became a professor and
head of the new Furniture School, a position he held until his death in
1954. Many of Klint's students became well-known Danish furniture ar
chitects, and he has been credited with the founding of a special "Klint
school" of furniture design. The Klint ideal was presented as a scientific
approach, and his furniture design was held up as an alternative to the
international modernism of, for example, the German Bauhaus school.
In contrast to the innovative work of the Bauhaus school, Klint based
his designs on existing, mostly British, types of furniture, but he em
phasized function?not form.17
Klint's ideas, according to the subnarrative, influenced all Danish fur
niture architects. Klint did not write much about his method, but he did
publish an article in 1930, in which he explained the principles of mea
surement that he considered a prerequisite for designing functionalist
furniture. It seems that, at least in principle, Klint did not view furniture
16 There is a substantial literature on consumption, taste, and lifestyle. For different per
spectives, see, for instance, Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (New York,
1994; 1st ed. 1899); Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste
(London, 1984); and Judy Attfield, Wild Things: The Material Culture of Everyday Life (Ox
ford, 2000). See also Tim Dant, Material Culture in the Social World: Values, Activities, Life
styles (Buckingham, 1999); and Grant McCracken, Culture and Consumption. Concerning
furniture and interior decoration, see Grant McCracken, Culture and Consumption II: Mar
kets, Meaning and Brand Management (Bloomington, 2005), 17~47; and, albeit for another
period, Leora Auslander, Taste and Power: Furnishing Modern France (Berkeley, 1996). See
also Joy Parr, "Household Choices as Politics and Pleasure," International Labor and Working
Class History 55 (April 1999): 112-28; Ruth Madigan and Moira Munro, "'House Beautiful':
Style and Consumption in the Home," Sociology 30, no. 1 (1996): 41-58; and Ian Woodward,
"Divergent Narratives in the Imagining of the Home amongst Middle-Class Consumers: Aes
thetics, Comfort and the Symbolic Boundaries of Self and Home," Journal of Sociology 39,
no. 4 (2003): 391-412, who, from different perspectives and empirical bases, argue that con
sumers were torn between the desire for decoration and the desire for comfort. For a discus
sion of Pierre Bourdieu's theory of distinction in relation to U.S. consumption, see Douglass
B. Holt, "Does Cultural Capital Structure American Consumption?" in The Consumer Society
Reader, eds. Schor and Holt. For a discussion of taste in relation to furniture, see Stephen
Bayley, Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things (New York, 1992).
17 This representation of Klint can be found in many places. For a more detailed discus
sion, see Hansen, Da danske mobler blev moderne: Historien om dansk mebeldesigns
storhedstid (Copenhagen, 2006). For an example in English, see Steen Eiler Rasmussen,
"Furniture: Tools for Living," Danish Foreign Office Journal 8 (1953): 5-7, and the some
what more critical treatment by Davies in "Twentieth Century Danish."

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Per H. Hansen / 454
design as a matter of aesthetics or form, but rather as a scientific method

for maximizing function.18
Klint's views were typical of the period's ideals of modernity. In his
effort to mold furniture design into a scientific discipline, he incorpo
rated the philosophy of Frederick Taylor, the American management ex
pert. The idea that furniture could be developed and designed according
to a scientific method was part of the Klint subnarrative. (This idea be
came problematic when the grand narrative of modernism, which was
based on a belief in progress and objective goals, faced a challenge at the
beginning of the 1960s.) The Klint theme of a uniquely Danish tradition
of functional, honest, democratic furniture appeared concurrently with
the invention of a tradition of backward historical continuity.19
In the 1930s, a few Danish producers, inspired by Bauhaus, were
fashioning furniture from new types of material, such as steel tubes,
but this development was not well received by Klint and his followers,
who labeled it funkis. By this term, they meant it was not genuinely
functional but was only a response to fashion that catered to the whims
of consumers. In the 1930s, the narrative of Danish design explicitly
distinguished between Danish tradition and the traditions of other
countries, which were adopting modernism and were said to value form
and fashion over function. Since that time, the Klint narrative version
has been circulated and reinforced by actors connected to the network.
Even today this point of view is central to an understanding of Danish
modern furniture, as demonstrated by the Lonely Planet Guide's recent
naming of Klint as the originator of Danish modern furniture.20
After Klint's death in 1954, his former students elaborated on the
legend of Klint as the father of the school, developing it into a para
digm. In 1959, for example, Peter Hvidt, a successful furniture designer
18 Kaare Klint, "Undervisningen i mobeltegning ved kunstakademiet," Arkitekten 13 (1930):

193-224.
19 See Hansen, Da danske mobler. Concerning the invention of tradition, see, for in
stance, Povl Abrahamsen, Den danske enkelhed: Et samfund og dets arkitektur (Copen
hagen, 1994), who devotes an entire book to demonstrating a unique and lengthy tradition of
simplicity in Danish architecture and furniture design. The Arts of Denmark exhibitions in
the United States in i960 and 1961 are another good example. See Erik Lassen, The Arts of
Denmark, Viking to Modern: An Exhibition Organized by the Danish Society of Arts and
Crafts and Industrial Design, United States of America, 1960-61 (Copenhagen, i960).
Astrid Skjerven, "Goodwill for Scandinavian Design: The Lunning Prize, 1951-70" (unpub
lished Ph.D. diss., Oslo University, 2001) also discusses the invention of tradition in Danish
furniture. For the invention of traditions, see Eric Hobsbawm and Terrence Ranger, eds., The
Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983).
20 Denmark: The Lonely Planet Guide (2005), 38. See also Per H. Hansen and Klaus Pe
tersen, Den store danske mebelguide (Copenhagen, 2005), and, in particular, Hansen, Da
danske mobler (2004). Recent examples of the Klint subnarrative are Douglass Brenner,
"The Other Danish Modern," New York Times, 3 Apr. 2005; and M. Owens, "Kaare Klint,"
Elle Decor, Apr. 2005: 84-88.

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himself, wrote that Klint had invented the scientific approach to furni
ture design: "If one looks at Danish furniture design today it is clear
that people who are occupied with furniture design have continued this
method. Others have broken away and are giving the furniture freer
forms than Klint did. However, in their best designs one recognizes an
allegiance to Klint's principles."21
This opinion was often repeated. As was the case in the 1930s, the
struggle to distinguish acceptable from unacceptable furniture design
was a semantic one. The Klint narrative was systematically promoted in
Denmark and abroad by the network, particularly by Klint's former stu
dents and colleagues, including Borge Mogensen, Arne Karlsen, Rigmor
Andersen, Kay Fisker, and Steen Ejler Rasmussen. In the July 1959
issue of the American magazine House Beautiful, Elizabeth Gordon
wrote that Scandinavian architects and designers, who were themselves
craftsmen, kept in contact with producers to create a "very democratic
design."22 Gordon asserted that "Klint... was one of the guiding lights
in modern design." She went on to say that "he led the revolt against
the imitation of past forms; he preached that honest materials honestly
used solve human needs with directness and beauty."23 This was typical
of many statements that appeared in Danish and international publica
tions, beginning in the 1940s and continuing up to the present. For ex
ample, in 1950 the New York Times informed its readers that Klint was
responsible for the Danish style, in which the use "of detailed, careful
cabinetmaking ... all adds to this impression of furniture that is mod
ern but solidly based on tradition." The reporter continued by stating
that "as early as 1924 Klint started an investigation of the dimension of
things_"24
By i960, there were already clear signs that Klint's influence on
Danish modern furniture had not been nearly as strong as his champi
ons were suggesting. Nevertheless, a traveling exhibit, called "The Arts
of Denmark," which toured the United States from i960 to 1961, still
featured Klint as a protagonist of Danish Modern: "The basic work for
the design of light, modern types of furniture that fit naturally into a
modern, democratic milieu was carried out in the thirties by architects
in cooperation with cabinetmakers. A great influence on the develop
ment in this period [was] due to the architect Kaare Klint."25
21 Peter Hvidt, "Snedker og arkitekt," Berlingske Tidende, 17 Feb. 1959. (My translation.)
22 Elizabeth Gordon, "The Beauty that Comes with Common Sense," House Beautiful,
July 1959: 55-122.
23 Marion Gough, "Hans J. Wegner?Poet of Practicality," House Beautiful, July 1959:
65-114.
24 Betty Pepis, "For the Home: Danish Craft Designs Stem from the Traditional," New
York Times: 15 July 1950.
25 Lassen, The Arts of Denmark.

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Per H.Hansen / 456
Elizabeth Gordon, the editor of the magazine House Beautiful, was a long-time supporter of
Danish Modern and Scandinavian Design. The Jury 1959 issue, which was devoted to Danish
modern furniture, presented the main themes of the narrative to its readership. The chair
man of the Society of Arts and Crafts noted the issue's extensive coverage of Denmark and of
Danish chairs. (Image courtesy of House Beautiful magazine/Hearst Communications, Inc.)
Craftsmanship: The Cabinetmakers' Subnarrative. The high point

of the cabinetmakers' story was the Cabinetmakers' Guild Furniture
Exhibitions, which were first organized in 1927 as a response to in
creased competition from cheap Danish and foreign furniture. Although
the exhibition was a commercial success, the furniture it displayed, which
was largely in traditional and historic styles, was criticized by the young
architects who preferred functional designs. These architects were look
ing for manufacturers to make the modern furniture they were design
ing, but they found little interest among industrial manufacturers, so
they accepted invitations from the cabinetmakers, an arrangement that
marked the beginning of the cooperation between the two professions.
In the first half of the 1930s, this arrangement was institutionalized
with the creation of the Cabinetmakers' Guild Furniture Exhibitions,
which took over the organization of the annual exhibitions that would

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become a forum for Danish modern furniture and managed them until
1966.26
Among the important promoters of the cabinetmakers' narrative
were the master cabinetmakers A. J. Iversen, Jacob Kjaer, and Povl
Christiansen. Iversen participated in every exhibition from 1927 to 1966,
and he never missed an opportunity to stress the importance of cooper
ation between architects and cabinetmakers and to remind listeners of
the cabinetmakers' central role in initiating the collaboration. In a lec
ture delivered in the early 1930s, he made this comment: "A few years
ago a group of Copenhagen architects and cabinetmakers started to co
operate at the Cabinetmakers' Guild Exhibitions-Through this coop
eration we have achieved results that have been noticed abroad and
which have had the greatest importance for Danish furniture design."27
The cabinetmakers' narrative version, which started early on, not
only emphasized their cooperative arrangement with the architects, but
also highlighted their excellent craftsmanship and use of wood. The
warm, natural qualities that wood evoked were contrasted with the steel
favored by the Bauhaus school, which the cabinetmakers described as
cold and unnatural.
In the catalog for the 1958 exhibition, Povl Christiansen, chairman
of the guild, explained why its logo pictured a Renaissance cabinet
maker: "He has taught us the craft we practice today, taught us respect
for good and honest craftsmanship. More than four hundred years ago
he established the Guild that is the precondition for our exhibitions. He
has established the craft-based tradition that forms the basis of our
work today."28 This tradition, he wrote, had also become the model for the
furniture industry, which increasingly employed "the outstanding furni
ture architects who were trained and earned their experience through
cooperation with the cabinetmakers at the annual exhibitions."29
The cabinetmakers constructed a strong individual and collective
identity for themselves and projected a public image to support it.30
The image was strengthened by the subnarrative, which was embraced
by groups operating outside the cabinetmakers' circles. The Danish state,
26 See Jalk, Dansk Mobelkunst; Povl Christiansen, Fyrretyve ar med snedkerlaugets mo

beludstillinger (Copenhagen, 1986); Viggo Sten Moller and Johannes Hansen, Vore dages
mobler: Et handvaerks vej i en maskintid (Copenhagen, 1955); and Hansen, Da danske
mobler.
27 Quoted from Hansen, Da danske mobler. (My translation.)
28 Povl Christiansen, Snedkerlaugets Mobeludstilling: Kobenhavns Snedkerlaug 32. Ud
stilling. Exhibition catalog. (Copenhagen, 1958). (My translation.)
29 Christiansen, Snedkerlaugets Mobeludstilling.
30 For the concepts of narrating identity and positioning, see Barbara Czarniawska,
"Identity Lost or Identity Found? Celebration and Lamentation over the Postmodern View of
Identity in Social Science and Fiction, " in Schultz, Hatch, and Larsen, The Expressive Orga
nization, 271-83.

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Per H. Hansen / 458
for example, began to provide some funding for the exhibitions in the
1930s, and after the war it extended marketing support as well. In 1951
the Danish Foreign Office Journal asserted that "the basis of the suc
cess of Danish furniture-making, besides fine craftsmanship, is the
close contact between cabinetmaker and designer."31
In i960, Viggo Steen Moller, another important member of the net
work, wrote in the same journal that the cooperative arrangement be
tween cabinetmakers and architects had been instrumental in estab
lishing the high quality of both the design and the execution of Danish
furniture.32 High-quality craftsmanship and design were critical fea
tures of Danish Modern branding, and spokesmen for the network
stressed them continually after the late 1930s.
By the end of that decade, Danish furniture was attracting interna
tional attention. Even though Denmark did not exhibit much furniture
at the World's Fair in New York in 1939, representatives were there to
circulate the story of Danish Modern. The Danish exhibition catalog,
prepared by the Danish Society of Arts and Crafts, and the permanent
sales exhibition Den Permanente emphasized both the influence of
Klint and the "genuine, professional workmanship" of "several notable
handicraftsmen."33 The catalog described Danish industrial art as pos
sessing "a homely tone in nature and character, capricious effects hav
ing been unknown to us. Our best works are characterized by the will
to produce genuine, technical workmanship, a sound critical attitude to
untimely modernism, but also a natural desire to take up the problems
for renewed investigation and solution in accordance with the exigen
cies of the times."34 This passage combines the two themes?the role of
Klint and the contribution of skilled cabinetmakers?and demonstrates
that the narrative was in place well before Danish Design made its inter
national breakthrough around 1950.
The Central Narrative Encounters Problems. Klint first showed
his work in 1930 at the Cabinetmakers' Guild Furniture Exhibitions,
which connected the two main themes. The narrative's central tenet was
that cooperation between the architects and the cabinetmakers was the
force behind the rise of Danish modern furniture design. The scientific
functionalism espoused by Klint included a respect for tradition that en
abled it to incorporate the cabinetmakers' craftsmanship and use of tra
ditional materials. The central theme of the story was the unsurpassed
31 "Danish Arts and Crafts. A Permanent Sales Exhibition," Danish Foreign Office Jour
nal no. 3 (1951): 24-26.
32 Viggo Sten Moller, "Fashions in Furniture," Danish Foreign Office Journal (i960, spe
cial U.S. issue): 28-30.
33 Modern Danish Industrial Art: New York, 1939 (Copenhagen, 1939), 3-4.
34 Ibid., 5.

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beauty, simplicity, functionality, honesty, and quality in design and

craftsmanship of the furniture and the balance its makers struck be
tween tradition and modernism. These qualities were represented as
unique to Danish modern furniture and were contrasted with those of
international modernism. According to the story, its stellar qualities al
lowed Danish Modern to conquer the international markets.
Like any narrative, this one had a beginning, a middle, and a (happy)
ending. It began with the formation of the alliance between architects
and cabinetmakers (both heroes); entered a period of crisis, when the
consumers and the furniture industry (the villains) would not accept
the new style; and ended with the acceptance of Danish Modern, not
only by many Danish customers but by international consumers as well.
However, there are inconsistencies in this seventy-year-old narrative.
First, it omits the important contributions of two organizations.
The Danish Society for Arts and Crafts and Den Permanente promoted
Danish furniture at home and abroad, energetically publicizing the alli
ance between architects and cabinetmakers, Kaare Klint's central role,
and the furniture's qualities of beauty and functionality, which were
as much a social construction as essential characteristics of the pieces
themselves.
Second, Klint's role has been exaggerated, as he was not primarily
responsible for the cooperative arrangement between cabinetmakers
and architects. Rather, cabinetmakers like A. J. Iversen, Jacob Kjaer,
and Povl Christiansen, in concert with a group of young, radical archi
tects led by Viggo Sten Moller, were the protagonists in this joint effort.
For more than twenty years, Moller was a prominent figure, both in the
network and in the Danish Society for Arts and Crafts: first as editor of
the Society's monthly journal and then as director of the Society. As
early as 1928, Moller exhibited at the Cabinetmakers' Guild Furniture
Exhibition, but he and the other young architects have not received
much attention in histories of Danish Modern. Moller had called for a
more radical break from established patterns of design, interior decora
tion, and consumption. He and the rest of the network, in which Klint
barely participated, were "new opinion leaders," initiating a "radical re
form of cultural meaning."35 They were opposed to imitations of earlier
styles, which they considered dishonest. They wanted to develop cheap,
new, standardized, functional types of furniture for industry to mass
produce. The similarities of their designs to those of international mod
ernists, such as le Corbusier and members of the German Bauhaus
School, were apparent, but Danish modern furniture continued to be
35 See McCracken, Culture and Consumption, 76-77; and Hansen, Da danske mobler.

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Per H.Hansen / 460
As Danish Modern gained in popularity and status, it became more difficult for Danish pro
ducers and U.S. importers to protect the brand from knockoffs. The Society for Arts and
Crafts spent a considerable portion of its resources combating this problem. The Tell City
Chair Company capitalized on the reputation of the Danish Modern brand when introducing
its own line, pointing out that its furniture was priced "much lower than the imports." (Photo
graph reproduced with permission of Tell City Chair Company, Tell City, Ind. Tell City ? is a
registered trademark of Tell City Chair Company. All Rights Reserved.)
identified as a "handicraft," even after furniture manufacture became a

dominant industry in the postwar period.36
Third, although Klint analyzed thoroughly the dimensions and
function of the furniture he designed, he was also interested in form,
and not all his furniture was functional. Most of his furniture was built
by cabinetmakers from expensive imported materials, such as Cuban
mahogany and Nigerian goat hides. Thus, it was far too expensive for
the ordinary consumers who were targeted by the functionalist move
ment. The high cost of Danish modern furniture, including Klint's, has
often been downplayed in the literature.37
Fourth, not enough attention has been paid to the contribution of
industrial furniture manufacturers. Beginning in the late 1940s, a num
ber of manufacturers began mass producing the furniture that had been
designed by the same architects who were cooperating with the cabi
netmakers. Thus, even though the cabinetmakers' furniture was avant
36 Leif Leer Sorensen, Edvard Heiberg og dansk funktionalisme?en arkitekt og hans
samtid (Copenhagen, 2000).
37 See, for instance, David Raizman, The History of Modern Design (London 2003), 204.

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The celebrated "Hornback" chair

from the L. tinning Collection
of Scandinavian furniture
^ ^ GEORG JENSEN INC^

This advertisement for Wegner's "Hornback" chair appeared in the July 1959 issue of House
Beautiful The ad boasted of the "handcraftedness" of the chair, a core value emphasized in
the story of Danish Modern. The chair was handcrafted to a greater degree than most Danish
modern furniture exported to the North American market, but even the guild cabinetmakers
who produced this model had begun to use machinery in their workshops. The contradiction
between the narrative and the changing context became even more marked during the 1960s.
(Image courtesy of Georg Jensen, Denmark.)
garde, most of the furniture that made Danish Modern world famous
was industrially produced rather than handcrafted.
Fifth, the furniture from the Klint School did not make Danish De
sign internationally successful. By the second half of the 1930s, a new
generation of young designers had emerged, and they adopted a freer,
more expressive approach to functionalist furniture. However, like Klint,
they worked primarily in wood, and they depended on master cabinet
makers for high-quality craftsmanship. Among the best-known practi
tioners of this new, freer trend were Hans Wegner and Finn Juhl, who
were pillars of the annual Cabinetmakers' Guild Furniture Exhibitions
for many years. Wegner and Juhl became famous twentieth-century
design icons, but neither was trained by Klint, and both were among
the first to cooperate with industrial furniture manufacturers. In 1949,

154.59.125.34 on Mon, 03 May 2021 15:05:49 UTC
Per H. Hansen / 462
Juhl criticized the Klint paradigm, suggesting that Danish furniture de

signers should work more closely with industrial manufacturers and
should design models that could be mass produced.38
By the beginning of the 1950s, Danish furniture design developed
in another direction as well, one that was closer to international mod
ernism and did not fit with the narrative. The best-known practitioners
of this school were Arne Jacobsen and Poul Kjaerholm, who showed
their work at only one cabinetmakers' exhibition, preferring to work in
steel, rather than in wood.39
These two approaches to design?the freer, sculptural style of Wegner
and Juhl, and Jacobsen's and Kjaerholm's international style?dominated
the international modern furniture markets in the postwar period.
Thus, none of the four most famous Danish furniture designers?Finn
Juhl, Hans J. Wegner, Arne Jacobsen, or Poul Kjaerholm?fits into the
conventional narrative. A coherent account of the rise and decline of
Danish Modern will have to consider this divergence from traditional
accounts.
Networking and Preparation of the Home Market
The Danish Society of Arts and Crafts (est. 1907), the Cabinetmak
ers' Guild Furniture Exhibitions (established in 1927), and Den Perma
nente (established in 1931) were instrumental in creating the network's
institutional and organizational framework. These organizations were
not simply trade bodies. They were the social and cultural arenas for
the network of architects, producers, and intellectuals who made up the
functionalist movement.
Beginning in the early 1930s, these organizations sponsored furniture
exhibitions and competitions. In the 1940s and 1950s, they extended their
activities to publishing, journalism, radio, and film. From 1930 to the late
1960s, the Danish Society of Arts and Crafts, which had spearheaded the
promotion of Danish Design, generated tremendous publicity for Danish
furniture, both at home and abroad. The Society published both a maga
zine and books, organized lectures and teaching materials, and supported
most of the exhibitions of Danish modern furniture and other design
products that were held in Denmark, Scandinavia, Western Europe, and
North America. Thus, it is puzzling that the Society has not received more
attention in historical accounts of Danish Modern.
38 Finn Juhl, "Danish Furniture Design," Architects' Year Book (1949): 134-40.
39 See Bard Henriksen, "Arne Jacobsen and His Laminated Chairs," Scandinavian Jour
nal of Design History 7 (1997): 7-28; Carsten Thau and Kjeld Vindum, Arne Jacobsen
(Copenhagen, 2001); Chr. Harlang, ed., Poul Kjaerholm (Copenhagen, 1999); and Hansen,
Da danske mobler.

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Den Permanente's role as a permanent sales exhibition and pro

moter of Danish Design has also been neglected. Soon after its estab
lishment in 1931, its membership grew to more than two hundred pro
ducers and designers. Its exhibits were selected by a jury, and Den
Permanente became the most important outlet for the Cabinetmakers'
Guild Furniture Exhibitions, both at home and abroad. As early as 1939
Den Permanente participated in an exhibition of Danish arts and crafts
in the United States that was organized by an American businessman,
Louis Bonnard, who promised to publicize Danish Modern in the
United States. The same year, Den Permanente and the Danish Society
for Arts and Crafts exhibited the furniture at the World's Fair in New
York.40 During the 1950s and early 1960s, Den Permanente also be
came well known as far away as Japan. By i960 approximately 75 per
cent of its sales were overseas, primarily in the United States.41
The furniture architects and cabinetmakers were the most promi
nent members of the design network, and several helped to promote
the idea that modern furniture was about "modern democratic simplic
ity," representing a "natural and healthy development."42 During the
1930s, it became the order of the day for the exhibitors (approximately
twenty-five in all) at the Cabinetmakers' Guild Furniture Exhibitions to
present new models every year. By the end of the 1930s, the relation
ship between cabinetmakers and architects had solidified. An architect
would create new designs for the same cabinetmaker year after year.
Some of the best-known working relationships were between architect
Hans J. Wegner and master cabinetmakers Johannes Hansen, Finn
Juhl, Niels Vodder, Kaare Klint, and Rud Rasmussen. The earlier train
ing that most of the architects had received as cabinetmakers strength
ened the bond between the two groups and reinforced the architects'
commitment to craftsmanship, cabinetmaking, and wood as a primary
material. The furniture-design competitions were an added incentive
for the architects to continue to cooperate with the cabinetmakers in
order to produce new models each year. The exhibitions were turned
into avant-garde fashion shows, inspiring the models that would later
be mass produced by the furniture industry.
40 Modern Danish Industrial Art; and Hansen, Da danske mobler.

41 For more information on Den Permanente, see Hansen, Da danske mobler; Frederik
Sieck, Dansk kunsthandveerk og kunstindustri, 1931-1981?belyst gennem glimt af Den
Permanentes historie (Copenhagen, 1981); and Esbjorn Hiort, Premio la Rinascente Com
passo d'Oro?Den Permanente?Copenhagen (Milan, 1964).
42 Such statements, like these made by master cabinetmaker Jacob Kj^er in 1932, were not
unusual. See Jacob Kj?r, "Magasinmobler?magasinstil," Nyt Tidsskrift for Kunstindustri
(1932): 119-20. The concept of Danish design as democratic is also discussed in Davies,
Twentieth-Century Danish Furniture Design.

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Per H. Hansen / 464
The close connections between the Danish Society of Arts and

Crafts, Den Permanente, and the Cabinetmakers' Guild Exhibition were
extended in the 1940s by interlocking boards and close contacts among
the architects, cabinetmakers, and officers of the organizations. The or
ganizations established liaisons with influential journalists and design
critics, who covered their activities and wrote many positive reports.
After the Second World War, the network expanded beyond the
Danish border. In 1946 the Nordic arts-and-crafts organizations met to
discuss the spread of functionalism. One outcome of this cooperation
was the Design in Scandinavia exhibition, held in the United States
from 1954 to 1957 (discussed below). In addition, people in the United
States promoted Danish Modern, including designer George Nelson,
and, most influentially, Edgar Kaufmann Jr., director of the department
of industrial design at the Museum of Modern Art, who in 1950 estab
lished the Good Design shows, which promoted Danish-style furniture
throughout the country.43 In addition, Georg Jensen Inc. in New York
created the Lunning Prize in 1951. The first two to win this prize were
Hans Wegner and Tapio Wirkkala of Finland. The Lunning prize be
came a prestigious annual design event that shone a spotlight on Scan
dinavian design and helped to construct the idea of Danish Modern.44
Circulating the Narrative. In 1930, most furniture manufactur
ers were very small. Ignoring the criticism leveled at them by architects,
they continued to turn out traditional suites of furniture in historical
styles long after the end of the war. Like the retailers, they argued that
mainstream consumers, including the lower classes, did not want mod
ern furniture but preferred to emulate the styles purchased by the
upper class.45 The architects countered with the argument that there
was not enough affordable and functional furniture. A rare exception was
the furniture manufacturer Fritz Hansen, who began in the early 1930s
to cooperate with architects and to produce relatively cheap modern
furniture.
Since most consumers at that time did not want modern furniture,
demand had to be created. This task involved a slow process that could
be seen as a Schumpeterian innovation: "opening up" a new market. It
was facilitated by changes in the economic regime that took place dur
43 See A. J. Pulos, The American Design Adventure, 1940-1975 (Cambridge, Mass.,

1988); and George Nelson, Chairs (New York, 1953).
44 See Hansen, Da danske mebler; Bent Salicath, "The Lunning Prize Designers' Exhibi
tion" (New York, 1957); and Skjerven, Goodwill for Scandinavian Design.
45 This discussion mirrored the "trickle down" theory proposed by Veblen, in The Theory
of the Leisure Class, and by Georg Simmel, in "Fashion," International Quarterly (Oct. 1904;
reprinted in American Journal of Sociology [May 1957]: 541-58). Cabinetmaker A. J.
Iversen was firmly convinced of this theory. He believed that once the upper classes began to
adopt modern furniture, the lower classes would follow suit. See Hansen, Da danske mobler.

154.59.125.34 on Mon, 03 May 2021 15:05:49 UTC
ing the Great Depression and the Second World War.46 Import restric
tions cut into foreign competition during this formative period of coop
eration between architects and cabinetmakers.
The social agenda of the times made it easier for the network to
spread the message of modernism. Its campaign to promote a better
life through better homes was paternalistic, normative, and strongly in
fluenced by social engineering and the rise of the Danish welfare state.
The propaganda was designed to shape consumers' preferences and
choices. Advertising was one strategy, but more important was the
coverage by magazines like the popular Bygge og Bo. Tidsskrift for
moderne hjem [Building and Living: The Magazine for Modern Homes],
first published in 1934, and the trade magazine Nyt Tidsskrift for Kun
stindustri [The New Magazine for Industrial Arts], which was launched
in 1928.47 In addition, numerous "how-to" books on interior decoration
appeared from the mid-i920s to the 1960s, with titles like Sadan skal
du bo (How to Furnish Your Home), Bo Bedre (Live Better), and Bo
Rigtigt (Live Correctly).48
In the late 1930s, a few department stores introduced modern Dan
ish furniture, and during the 1940s a few manufacturers converted their
product lines. Exhibitions and lectures organized by the Danish Society
of Arts and Crafts were held all over the country, and numerous stories
appeared, first in magazines, newspapers, and the radio and, then, begin
ning in the 1950s, in film and on television. The network's influence in
creased, and as consumers' incomes grew along with their mobility, more
homes were constructed, stimulating a demand for modern furniture. By
the end of the 1940s, modern Danish furniture was available from retail
ers countrywide, particularly after the Danish cooperative retailer FDB
introduced a comprehensive line of such furniture at affordable prices.49
Advertising became more widespread, and lifestyle magazines fre
quently reported on new designs and featured examples for young couples
to emulate in furnishing their apartments and houses. The emphasis on
46 Cf. Joseph Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry into Prof
its, Capital, Credit, Interest, and the Business Cycle (Cambridge, Mass., 1934, English ed.),
66. This case does not fit well with Blaszczyk's claim, in Imagining Consumers, that produc
ers relied on fashion intermediaries to learn about consumers' preferences.
47 Interestingly, in 1948, Nyt Tidsskrift for Kunstindustri [New Magazine for Industrial
Arts] changed its title to Dansk Kunsth&ndvaerk [Danish Arts and Crafts]. The change re
flected the early Danish functionalists' initial admiration of the machine age, which subse
quently shifted to a preference for arts and crafts.
48Gudrun Egebjerg, Sadan skal du bo (Copenhagen, 1936); Bo Bedre (Copenhagen,
!937); and Esbjorn Hiort, Bo rigtigt (Copenhagen, 1947). See also Jacob Kja?r, Mobelbogen
(Copenhagen, 1945).
49 The background of FDB-Mobler is discussed in more detail in Hansen, Da danske
mobler, and in Jorgen Guldberg, "Tradition, modernitet og usamtidighed: Om Borge
Mogensens FDB-mobler og det modernes hjemliggorelse" (Working paper, University of
Southern Denmark, Center for Cultural Studies, 1998).

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Per H. Hansen / 466
the qualities of simplicity, uniqueness, functionality, honesty, and crafts

manship appealed to consumers who had acquired a modern taste and
a desire to adopt the new lifestyle.50 However, Danish modern furni
ture never became the choice of all consumers. Many still clung to tra
ditional styles. The preference for Danish modern occurred primarily
among groups with high cultural capital?intellectuals and middle-class
people with more education. The cabinetmakers' strategy of branding
the furniture with their own names and the names of their designers
appealed to consumers who wanted to express their good taste in design
as well as in art and culture. 51
As a result, the 1950s were golden years for the cabinetmakers. As
the Danish furniture industry grew, manufacturers began to produce
pieces that were exclusively designed by well-known architects. In Den
mark, both "the network" and the furniture industry were riding a wave
of success. The next challenge was to sell Danish modern furniture to
the world, and this was to be accomplished by the construction of an
international brand?Danish Design.
Conquering International Markets
In March 1945, even before the war ended, the Danish Society for
Arts and Crafts began to discuss how to create an export market. They
soon concentrated on the United States, drawn by its growing con
sumer affluence, its established market for modern furniture, and its
interest in Scandinavian arts and crafts.52 Thus, when Danish furniture
was introduced to North America, consumers were already familiar
with modernism, which had been promoted by an American network of
designers and producers.53 Finally, the narrative of Danish modern fur
niture as a unique, handcrafted product appealed to cultured, urban
consumers who wished to demonstrate their good taste and individu
ality through ownership of "authentic" artisan objects rather than mass
produced goods.54
50 Hansen, Da danske mobler; and Birgit Kaiser, Den ideologiske funktionalisme (Copen
hagen, 1992).
51 Kaiser, Den ideologiske funktionalisme and interview on 25 Feb. 2004 with cabinet
maker Holger Nissen, who took over Worts's cabinetmaker's workshop in 1956.
52 Hansen, Da danske nwbler; Davies, Scandinavian Furniture in Britain; and Davies, Mar
kets, Marketing and Design. Davies concentrates on the U.K. market. Because of the United
Kingdom's import restrictions, higher taxes, and lower income levels, exports to the United
Kingdom were primarily of cheaper furniture.
53 See Pulos, The American Design Adventure; G. H. Marcus, Design in the Fifties: When
Everyone Went Modern (New York, 1998); and Allen Tate and C. Ray Smith, Interior Design
in the 20th Century (New York, 1986), 390-91, 433-34.
54 Holt, Does Cultural Capital? 2.2.2, 238-41; Edward O. Laumann and James S. House,
"Living Room Styles and Social Attributes: The Patterning of Material Artifacts in a Modern

154.59.125.34 on Mon, 03 May 2021 15:05:49 UTC
Breaking into the U.S. Market. Most Danish producers had lit
tle if any knowledge of exports, and at the firm level they lacked the
necessary organizational and institutional background to take advan
tage of the perceived opportunities in the United States. However, their
attempts to build an export market were assisted by several organiza
tions: the Danish Society of Arts and Crafts; Den Permanente in coopera
tion with the export offices of the Confederation of Danish Industries;
the Danish Federation of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises; and the
Danish Foreign Ministry. The Society for Arts and Crafts launched a
series of exhibitions as a strategy to pave the way for exports.55
In the late 1940s, while planning for a U.S. exhibition, the Society
contacted Edgar Kaufmann at the Museum of Modern Art. Kaufmann
had visited Scandinavia in 1948, and he became a central figure in the
promotion of Danish and Scandinavian design in the United States. In
1950, he initiated the Good Design show in Chicago in cooperation with
Merchandise Mart, a trade-show producer. Although Kaufmann was criti
cal of the Klint school, in 1948 he wrote an article for the influential trade
magazine Interiors, which introduced Finn Juhl and Danish modern fur
niture to an American audience.56 As a result of this coverage, Juhl be
came the single most important Danish designer in the United States. In
1951 he was commissioned to decorate and furnish the Trusteeship Coun
cil Chamber at the United Nations headquarters in New York. Subse
quently Baker Furniture in Michigan began to manufacture his designs. 57
Hans Wegner also became popular in the United States. In February
1950, Interiors carried photographs of chairs by Wegner, Juhl, Borge
Mogensen, and others whose work had been shown at the Cabinetmakers'
Guild Exhibition in October 1949. The article, most likely drafted by Viggo
Sten Moller, director of the Society of Arts and Crafts, which submitted
the pictures, was a timely promotion of Danish Modern. It emphasized
the close cooperation between Danish architects and cabinetmakers,
contrasting it with the American furniture industry's reliance on stylists,
unskilled workers, and efficiency experts. Moller pointed out that Danish
chairs were handcrafted and custom made, stressed the cabinetmakers'
Urban Community," Sociology and Social Research no. 3 (1970): 321-42; and Parr, House
hold Choices, on the negative correlation between modern furniture and a traditional way of
life and low incomes. See also the American designer Edward Wormley's explanation for
Danish Modern's appeal to American consumers: Edward Wormley, "Hans J. Wegner i
USA," Dansk Kunsthandvaerk (1959): 45-46; and Abbey Johnson, "Homemaker Finds Fur
niture Buying Threat to Her Ego," Chicago Daily Tribune, 14 Feb. i960.
55 Hansen, Da danske mobler.
56 Edgar Kaufmann, "Finn Juhl of Copenhagen," Interiors (Nov. 1948): 96-99. See also
Olga Gueft, "Finn Juhl: About the Quiet Life of a Danish Architect," Interiors (Sept. 1950):
82-91.
57 "Juhl Furniture: Baker's Grand Rapids Galleries," Interiors (Nov. 1951): 84-93.

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Per H. Hansen / 468
1,000,000 -I-1
10,000-ry ~+
\ / *
1,000 - ?X--/??
+ m 0
100 -I-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-
NqT ^ Nq>* Nc?> N# Nc? Nc?> Nc&> $>
\m m 1947-prices Current
Figure 1. Danish furniture export to the

deflated by CPI index 1947 = 100. The sc
(Source: StatistiskArbog, 1947-1970.)
tradition of working in wood, a

design, construction, and mater
caught the attention of the magaz
ters from interior designers and
buy that particular chair.59 The
shop in Copenhagen, which in t
without any exports. Five years lat
niture, by then almost exclusive
exported, and in 1958 Hansen m
skirts of Copenhagen in order to b
ish furniture exports to the Unite
bolstered by the 30 percent devalu
1949. (See Figures 1 and 2.)
Danish Modern in the United S
furnished with Danish Modern
58D.A., "Danish Furniture: Old Hands G

86-91.
59 Interiors (March 1950). See also M0ller and Hansen, Vore dages mobler; Johan Moller
Nielsen, Wegner?en dansk mobelkunstner (Copenhagen 1965); and Denmark: The Lonely
Planet Guide, 38.
60 See also Svend Erik M0ller, "Den f0rste eksport til USA," in Svend Erik M0ller, ed., Pa
Wegners tid (Herning, 1989); and Flemming Kilander, "Dansk M0beleksport," in M0ller, ed.,
Pa Wegners tid.

154.59.125.34 on Mon, 03 May 2021 15:05:49 UTC
100%
80%- ^^^H^^^^^^^
40% m ^Bi^^BBlll^^^^BBBB
20% ~BBBff3^^^^^BBIlB^
/ / ^ K# ^ # s# ^ ^ ^ N# N# K# ^ ^ # ^ ^ ^ N# ^ N# <?
I Sweden O Norway a Germany OUK MUSA D Others [
Figure 2. Composition of Denmark's furniture export, 1947-1970. (Source: StatistiskArbog,

1947-1970.)
diers stationed at U.S. bases in Germany and the United Kingdom dur
ing the 1950s and 1960s. Some of these soldiers, and many American
tourists as well, visited Copenhagen and purchased the furniture from
cabinetmakers' workshops, from Den Permanente and other Danish re
tailers, and from department stores like Illums Bolighus. Danish retail
ers even catered to soldiers by setting up trailer showrooms outside
U.S. Army bases.61
However, these direct purchases by consumers were not as signifi
cant as the import of Danish furniture by American firms. Georg
Jensen Inc. and George Tanier Inc., in New York, and Svend Wohlert,
in San Francisco, had established personal ties in Denmark and thus
could be considered an extension of the Danish Design network.62 They
had made these connections around 1950, when they instituted regular
imports of high-end Danish furniture. By the mid-1950s, new importers
like John Stuart Inc., Raymor, and Selig, which did not have direct links
with Denmark, had entered the U.S. market. They imported and sold
Danish modern furniture from the best industrial producers, claiming
that it was handcrafted "by skilled artisans whose requirements for
61 Hansen, Da danske mebler.

62 The marketing of Danish furniture by persons with links to Denmark was also the case
in the U.K. See Jackson, Positive Influence, and Davies, Scandinavian Furniture in Britain.
See also Moller and Hansen, Vore dages mebler.

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Per H. Hansen / 470
quality and finish [were] unequalled." John Stuart Inc. called the furni
ture "The Danish Craftsmen Series."63
During the 1950s, news of Danish Design was reported in mass
market magazines like Interiors, Arts and Architecture, House Beautiful,
and House and Garden. In 1961, an article in Playboy described the Scan
dinavians as loving "the feel and look and warmth and weight of wood_
And the Scandinavians love the idea of handcraftsmanship; they exploit
the joys of handwork in gently modulated, sculptured wood surfaces, the
turns and joints made poignant by changes in grain markings."64
Design writers like Betty Pepis of the New York Times, Elisabeth Gor
don of House Beautiful, and Olga Gueft of Interiors tirelessly promoted
Danish Modern and campaigned against the international modernism
of Bauhaus.65 In October 1954, a New York Times writer expressed the
view that most pieces of furniture exhibited at the Cabinetmakers'
Guild Exhibition that year were "representative of the close cooperation
between Danish architects and cabinetmakers .... [Simplicity, prac
tical strength and utilization of appropriate materials characterize^]
these designs."66 Any doubts about the degree of skill required to pro
duce the furniture were put to rest by the photographs of Danish work
shops that accompanied the articles.67 However, by the beginning of
the 1950s many of the cabinetmakers had begun to use machine tools to
supplement their handcrafted work.
By the second half of the 1950s, Danish Modern had achieved an
international reputation and had conquered much of the niche market
for imported modern furniture in the United States. The line was per
ceived as trendsetting. Trade and lifestyle magazines reported frequently
on developments in Denmark, adding to the iconic status of the most
well-known pieces. The various meanings that had been assigned to
Scandinavia and Denmark carried over to their furniture. Scandina
vians were identified as having values that were very different from
those of Americans. Denmark was included in this frame, and a rosy
picture of the country was propagated by American publications like
Kate Keating's A Young American Looks at Denmark and Temple
Fielding's travel and shopping guides, which appeared in the 1950s and
1960s. In one passage, Keating wrote, "There is nothing new about
63 The quotation is from The Lunning Collection (catalog, n.d., probably 1957). See also
The Danish Craftsmen Series published by John Stuart Inc. (catalog, n.d.); and The George
Tanier Selection (catalogs: New York, 1956, i960).
64 J. Anderson, "Designs for Living," Playboy, July 1961: 50, 52,108-9, no.
65 A good example is Elizabeth Gordon, "The Threat to the Next America," House Beauti
ful: Apr. 1953: 126-30, 250-51.
66 "For the Home: New Designs Shown in Denmark," New York Times, 2 Oct. 1954. See
also Gough, Hans J. Wegner?Poet, 68, on Hans Wegner's furniture.
67 See, for instance, Edgar Kaufmann Jr., "Hans Wegner: The Heresies of a Quiet Dane,"
Industrial Design, Mar. 1959: 56-59.

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Danish craftsmanship," adding that Danish furniture is "the best, the

most useful, the most beautiful furniture in the world-"68 As early as
1956, tourists to Denmark were offered "industrial arts" tours and ex
cursions to some of the Danish welfare state's social institutions, such
as kindergartens, student dormitories, and nursing homes.69 Ameri
cans frequently commented on the Danish welfare system. In i960 an
American professor told readers of New York Times that "the Danish
temperament is liberal, progressive and experimental . . . one of the
most comprehensive and successful and certainly one of the best adver
tised [welfare states]."70
Not surprisingly, this image of Denmark as "liberal, progressive and
experimental" was used to promote the country. For instance, in 1964 a
full-page ad in the New York Times carried the headline, "Denmark. Fa
mous for Food, Fun and Fairy Tales." The ad highlighted Danish design
and mentioned exhibitions by Illums Bolighus and Den Permanente,
"where the best products of contemporary Danish craftsmanship are ex
hibited for sale." It also made the following claim:
A kingdom for more than a thousand years Denmark is . . . the old

est democracy and one of the most highly developed welfare-states
on the Globe. Climate, geography, culture and history have shaped
and supported a fascinating mentality. The modern Dane is a true
continental and internationalist... 71
In House Beautiful, Scandinavia was represented as the "cradle of

contemporary design," "where good things . . . [such as] cleanliness and
neatness and order and sunshine and flowers and beautiful food and gen
eral cheer . . . are paid special respect."72 This portrait fit with the values
that had been assigned to Danish Modern. Edgar Kaufmann Jr. acknowl
edged the relation between geography and design when he stated that
Danish design was "instinct with life and potential growth, [which] com
bined with scrupulous craftsmanship and a rich historical background,
[gave] Danish design its unique and enviable position in our world."73
The Spread of Danish Modern. In 1954 the four Scandinavian
countries, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland, organized what would
68 Kate Keating, A Young American Looks at Denmark (New York, 1963), 28, 36, 50. For
the shopping guides, see, for instance, Temple Fielding, Temple Fielding's Selective Shop
ping Guide to Europe (New York, 1961), and her glowing recommendation of Den Perma
nente and Illums Bolighus for furniture and design.
69 S. Johnsen & Co., Sightseeing Copenhagen and Sealand (brochure) (Copenhagen,
1956).
70 H. S. Commager, "Big Lessons from a Small Nation," New York Times Magazine, 2
Oct. i960.
71 "Famous for Food, Fun and Fairy Tales," New York Times, 23 Feb. 1964.
72 Sarah Tomerlin Lee, "Scandinavia," House Beautiful, Jan. 1968: 73.
73 Edgar Kaufmann Jr., "An American View of the Arts of Denmark and Danish Modern
Design," in Lassen, The Arts of Denmark, 99-106.

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Per H. Hansen / 472
prove to be the most ambitious and important marketing effort ever

launched for Scandinavian design. The concept of Design in Scandina
via originated at a meeting of the four national design organizations in
Sweden in 1951, at which they decided to organize an exhibition in the
United States. After the meeting, the Swedish group contacted the As
sociation of Art Museum Directors and its chairman Leslie Cheek Jr. of
the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, who accepted the idea and became
the American coordinator of the exhibition. Cheek also promoted Scan
dinavian design in the New York Times.74
From 1954 to 1957, Design in Scandinavia toured twenty-two cities
in the United States and two in Canada. More than 650,000 people at
tended the exhibition, and it was extensively covered in the press, on
television, and on the radio. Besides the official exhibition, retailers and
department stores in several cities organized commercial showings that
promoted sales and helped to create the Scandinavian brand. Several
cities on the tour took the opportunity to learn more about these na
tions. In Houston, for example, forty high schools held contests for the
best essay on Scandinavia, and department stores arranged special dis
plays of Scandinavian products.75
These related activities created a composite image of Scandinavia
that extended to the objects on display, and vice versa.76 In a review of
the exhibition, Kaufmann commented:
I wonder if any area of the world other than the Scandinavian

North, could muster such a list [of talented designers], could find
commerce and industry ready to back them, governments ready to
sponsor them .... The exhibition "Design in Scandinavia" is an
impressive and heartening demonstration of true culture.77
Energized by the exhibition's success, in 1955 the four countries es

tablished the Scandinavian Design Cavalcade, which was widely covered
in the American press. The Cavalcade coordinated design exhibitions in
the four countries in order to enable American tourists to visit any or all of
them each year during August and September. It prepared Danish retail
ers to accommodate the tourists, and it received an extra boost in 1959,
74 See Hansen, Da danske nwbler. For traditional accounts of how the exhibition was orga
nized, see Arne Remlov, Design in Scandinavia: An Exhibition of Objects for the Home from
Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden (Oslo, 1954); and Aake Huldt, Design in Scandinavia:
USA-Canada, 1954-1957 (Stockholm, 1958). Leslie Cheeks Jr. wrote about Scandinavian de
sign and American taste in "Do Americans Have Good Taste?" New York Times, 6 June 1954.
75 Betty Pepis, "Glass and Silver give Tone to Show," New York Times, 16 Jan. 1954. For a
systematic account of the press coverage of the exhibition tour, see Huldt, Design in Scandi
navia. See also Remlov, Design in Scandinavia; and Hansen, Da danske mobler.
76 For an analysis of this, see Ingeborg Glambek, Sett utenfra: Det nordiske i arkitektur
og design (Vojens, 1997).
77 Edgar Kaufmann Jr., "Scandinavian Design in the USA," Interiors (May 1954): 108-85.

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when House Beautiful published a special issue on "the Scandinavian

look in U.S. homes" that offered advice on "how to visit Denmark, Fin
land, Norway, and Sweden during the Scandinavian Design Cavalcade."78
By the end of the 1950s, the U.S. market had become so attractive
that Danish department stores and other retailers were producing com
prehensive and expensive catalogs in English with prices in U.S. dol
lars. "Denmark is known all over the world for its exquisite home fur
nishing[s], which are characterized by their outstanding design and
superb craftsmanship," the department store Magasin claimed in its
catalog on Danish Design.79 Illums Bolighus, which termed itself the
"Center of Modern Design," published a two-hundred-page book in
May 1961 describing the importance of wood in Danish Design, a point
that was emphasized by its binding of veneered teakwood. The depart
ment store Crome & Goldschmidt stated, "Each piece [of furniture] is
designed by an artist, and the very good workmanship is ever the mark
of Danish handicrafts."80
Consumers and Danish Modern. In 1952 the trade magazine Re
tailing Daily placed Georg Jensen Inc. in the luxury-goods category,
which also included Tiffany's. "Individuality is what they sell.... They
sell their customers a way of maintaining their self-expression in the
face of the ever-growing standardization of modern life."81 This assess
ment corresponded with the subsequent judgment of the Danish consul
general, Eyvind Bartels, who wrote that about one-third of the Danish
furniture exported to the United States belonged in the most-expensive
category of goods and was sold by interior decorators to consumers and
to companies that were American style leaders.82
While playing up its wood material, clean lines, and excellent work
manship, the promoters of Danish Modern did not mention the fact
that the furniture was not fully handcrafted. Rather, Danish Modern
was represented as a warm, sculptural alternative to the cold lines and
materials of international modernism and as an alternative to the
American preoccupation with efficiency and consumerism.83 In 1954, a
78 Marion Gough, "How to visit Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden during the Scan
dinavian Design Cavalcade," House Beautiful, July 1959: 46-110.
79 Danish Design, catalog prepared by Magasin du Nord (Copenhagen, i960).
80 Danish Design, catalog prepared by Crome & Goldschmidt Department Store (Copen
hagen i960); and Illums Bolighus: Center for Modern Design, catalog prepared by Illums
Bolighus (Copenhagen, 1961).
81 J. Katzen, "Prestige?The Intangible Asset," Retailing Daily, 28 Apr. 1952.
82 E. Bartels, "Danske mobler til USA," Mobilia (Feb. 1956): 21-28.
83 The examples are numerous, but see, for instance, Elizabeth Gordon, "The New Taste
Trend," House Beautiful, Oct. 1952: 174-75; Elizabeth Gordon, "The Editor's Forecast of the
New Taste Cycle," House Beautiful, Oct. 1952: 182-83, 269-72; M. Roche, "The Growing Love
of Soft, Rounded Flowing Forms," House Beautiful, Oct. 1952:184-87, 248-49; L. van Houten,
"Furniture," Arte & Architecture, Aug. 1954: 25-29; and George Tanier Selection (catalog).

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Per H. Hansen / 474
knowledgeable observer of the American furniture market, Lazette van

Houten, analyzed Kaufmann's Good Design program. She found that the
program made the American middle class aware of the importance of de
sign and that an increasing "number of young men and women [felt]
drawn to the work of particular designers. They ask[ed] for them by name,
taking a purely aesthetic pleasure in a silhouette, a construction detail, a
recognizable form. These [were] the middle-class young, the kids who
recognize[d] a Gauguin or Matisse when they [saw] one but who [could]
never hope to own an original. They [could], however, own... chairs and
tables originating in the workshops of craftsmen artists."84
The consumers described by Van Houten were attracted to Danish
Modern, and they fit into Bourdieu's category of people with high cul
tural capital. This was the lucrative market that Danish furniture en
tered in 1950.85 The existence of this interior-design trend is substanti
ated by letters from Americans who bought furniture in Denmark. For
instance, in 1952, a Stanford professor and his wife who had bought
furniture at cabinetmaker Thorald Madsen's workshop in Copenhagen
wrote to thank him for his "fine work," as did a Los Angeles man who
had purchased a desk and chair there in 1959 and had shown them to
his friends, who, he wrote, "agree that they are outstanding both in de
sign and execution." He concluded his letter by offering his "sincere
thanks for helping make our home more pleasant." Another American
customer, who had bought a desk, wrote to thank Madsen for the "great
satisfaction and pleasure that the desk has given me. It is beautifully
conceived and the workmanship that has gone into it reflects nothing
but credit for the skill and conscientiousness of your Danish craftsmen.
Altogether, it is one of the most deeply satisfying purchases I have ever
made." The desk, he continued, "has already attracted the admiring at
tention of a number of our friends, and some of them have even men
tioned the possibility of importing a similar piece for themselves." An
other customer wrote that his friends would be in Copenhagen next
spring and would "join us as highly satisfied customers."86
These private letters suggest that the meanings of Danish Modern
had reached consumers. By stressing its qualities of design and crafts
manship, the letters reveal how the narrative had worked its way into
society and was reinforcing consumers' attraction to the central values
of the line. The letters also illustrate the "possession rituals" that con
sumers engaged in as a way of endowing themselves with distinction.
84 Van Houten, Furniture.

85 See also Betty Pepis, "The People's Choice," New York Times, 2 Jan. 1955.
86 This correspondence can be found in the Danish Business Archive, Aarhus, archive of
"Thorald Madsens Snedkeri (1550)," box "1929-79, Diverse korrespondance vedr. ordrer og
tilbud."

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In other words, they were not only buying furniture; they were also ac
quiring symbols of good taste and displaying their ownership of a cer
tain lifestyle.87
A study of metropolitan Detroit revealed a strong connection be
tween the acquisition of "modern" possessions and elite social status.
"Modern ways of thinking" were associated with such purchases,
whereas people who decorated their homes in a more conventional
manner tended to hold traditional points of view.88 A Canadian study
of household choices carried out in the 1950s demonstrated that low
income families did not buy modern furniture.89 Hansen's exports to
North America between 1950 and 1955 went primarily to the areas
around large cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco,
Toronto, and Vancouver, where most dealers were located. There were
hardly any customers in the Midwest or the South.90 In 1965, the poet
Judson Jerome wrote: "My conversion was not to any religion, for few
of the in-group had any, but to that clan aspiring to success, cultivation,
knowledge, reason, collective order, scientific explanations, Danish fur
niture and Bronx diet."91
The New York Times published a quiz to test women's perfume
preferences. The responses revealed that women who liked Danish
Modern were also drawn to New York, Paris suits, and dry martinis. If
you ticked those boxes, apparently, "jet planes and skyscrapers and
good North American mink were made on your demand. You're proba
bly the best dressed woman on the block ... ."92
In short, during the 1950s Danish Modern became linked to good
taste and to a lifestyle that corresponded with the aspirations of the
middle and upper classes. It soon surpassed Swedish Modern, which
had been established earlier as a brand in the United States.93 The New
York Times, in a review of the Design in Scandinavia exhibition, wrote
that "concentration in the furniture section appears to be, as it should
be, on Danish chairs .... "94
87 For possession rituals, see McCracken, Culture and Consumption. According to Madi
gan and Munro, in "House Beautiful," the claim to craftsmanship is a general characteristic
of the furniture industry, even when the claim is not substantiated by the actual production
process. Nonetheless, the Danish network was successful in identifying craftsmanship as a
special characteristic of Danish furniture.
88 Laumann and House, Living Room Styles. See also McCracken, Culture and Consump
tion II, 17-47.
89 Parr, Household Choices.
90 See the map at the end of Moller and Hansen, Vore dages mebler.
91 Judson Jerome, "Go East, Young Man," Chicago Review 18 (1965): 78-86.
92 Betty Jo Ramsey, "What Perfume Tells About You," Los Angeles Times, 13 Nov. i960.
93 Monica Boman also makes this claim in her book on Swedish modern furniture, cf.
Monica Boman, ed., Svenska Mobler, 1890-1990 (Stockholm, 2004), 235. On the United
Kingdom, see Jackson, A Positive Influence, 48.
94 Pepis, Glass and Silver. During the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s, a number of
books and catalogs helped to construct Danish Modern as a brand. See, for instance, Contem

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Per H. Hansen / 476
A Brand under Pressure. By the end of the 1950s, the success of

Danish Modern was transforming the Danish social network into a
fashion system. Encouraged by the Danish state, the network shifted its
focus from improving the lives of ordinary people to encouraging the
commercial opportunities afforded by the Danish Modern line. Almost
50 percent of Denmark's furniture exports went to the United States,
where increasing competition was cutting into its strong position. At
the same time, critical voices were being raised in both countries,
claiming that "smart businessmen" were exploiting Danish Modern's
popularity by selling cheap knock-offs that threatened its reputation.
And Danish design critics began to complain that the country's furni
ture design was in need of renewal.95
These criticisms surfaced in the late 1950s while Danish Modern was
still a celebrated phenomenon. The idea that the line offered a unique
combination of superior design and high-quality production methods be
gan to be questioned, introducing the painful realization that even Dan
ish Modern had ridden the crest of a fashion cycle. The Klintian, modern
ist idea of furniture design as a scientific discipline that was exempt from
the dictates of taste, fashion, and markets became difficult to sustain.96
In confronting shifts in the wind, the network, particularly the
cabinetmakers, looked to their earlier narrative for solutions. While
the problem arose from a lack of innovation in Danish furniture design,
they were viewing it as an issue of quality, which prevented them from
abandoning the idea that cabinetmaking was a vital component of Danish
Modern. The leading Danish manufacturers and cabinetmakers dis
cussed the possibility of introducing quality control. A group of industrial
producers of high-end furniture established the Danish Furnituremak
ers' Control in 1959 with support from the government, but the cabinet
makers could not agree on a program of shared quality oversight.
Instead they decided to repeat their earlier formula for success: mount
an exhibition.97
The Arts of Denmark. Edgar Kaufmann came up with the idea of
holding yet another U.S. exhibition in the United States as early as
porary Danish Design (Copenhagen, i960); Esbjorn Hiort, Modern Danish Furniture (New
York, 1956); Ulf Hard af Segerstad, Modern Scandinavian Furniture (London, 1963); Arne
Karlsen and Anker Tiedemann, Made in Denmark: A Picture Book about Modern Danish
Arts and Crafts (New York, i960); A. Karlsen, B. Salicath, and M. Utzon-Frank, Contempo
rary Danish Design (Copenhagen, i960); Lassen, The Arts of Denmark; Svend Erik Moller,
Brugskunst i stuen [Danish Design in the Living Room] (Copenhagen, 1956); and Remlov,
Design in Scandinavia.
95 Hansen, Da danske mebler.
96 Regarding the shift from a modern to a postmodern consumer culture, see Douglas B.
Holt, "Why Do Brands Cause Trouble? A Dialectical Theory of Consumer Culture and Brand
ing," Journal of Consumer Research 29, no. 1 (2002): 70-90.
97 Ibid.

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1956, while Design in Scandinavia was still touring the country. Kauf
mann's proposal of holding a purely Danish exhibition at the Metropoli
tan Museum of Art was greeted enthusiastically in Denmark. The Danish
state, which participated in the negotiations, focused on its commercial
potential, as did the rest of the Danish network. Kaufmann, however,
wanted the exhibition to be a cultural and historical event, and he
warned that the museum would not accept a purely commercial show.
In response, a Danish official commented that the more "cultural" the
exhibition, the more difficult it would be to obtain funding.98
Kaufmann's position won, and in i960 and 1961 The Arts of Den
mark from Viking to Modern toured New York, Chicago, San Francisco,
and some smaller American cities. The immense promotional efforts of
the Danish network and government were matched by the press coverage
in the United States. The exhibition was a success, but it came at a time
when Danish Design had reached its zenith. Its imminent decline was
not clear to most observers at the time, but Kaufmann hinted at the pros
pect in November i960, when he commented diplomatically on the
"Danish talents, whose bursts of energy seems near some kind of peak."99
Danish Modern no longer carried the same social and cultural
meanings. The world was changing: pop culture and postmodernism
had entered the scene, and Denmark was losing its position as a design
leader. The life cycle of Danish Modern had run its course. In 1978 the
New York Times commented, "Danish modern, the style that domi
nated the popularity polls through most of the 1950s and into the
1960s, has long been out of fashion."100 Only two years later, the archi
tectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable asked, "Whatever happened to Dan
ish Modern?"101 The fairy tale had ended.
The Decline of Danish Design
In i960 Interiors argued that "the latter-day industrial revolution

that has taken place in Denmark [is proof that] the change from small
craft shop to large factories has, if anything, enhanced and secured
Denmark's reputation for design leadership in home furnishings."102

99 Edgar Kaufmann Jr., "Two Decades of Interiors: Design: The Guiding Stars, 1940 and
i960," Interiors (Nov. i960): 177-79. See also Hansen, Da danske mobler; and Lassen, The
Arts of Denmark.
100 Rita Reif, "A Show at the Met on What's Out of Fashion," New York Times, 2 Mar. 1978.
101 Ada Louise Huxtable, "The Melancholy Fate of Danish Modern Style," New York
Times, 21 Aug. 1980.
102 Bodil Wrede Nielsen, "Behind the scenes of Danish Design," Interiors (Oct. i960): 30.
See also Svend Erik Moller, "The Danes at Home," Danish Foreign Office Journal (special
U.S. issue, i960): 18-20.

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Per H. Hansen / 478
The article implied that Danish Design was still considered one of the
leading national brands in furniture design, but at the same time it hinted
that the ongoing industrialization of Denmark was about to create
problems for the line. The style, materials, production methods?and
the idea that furniture was only about functionality?that the cabinet
makers and furniture designers had made their own were coming under
social, cultural, and economic pressure. Critical writings, competition
from other sources, and changing consumer preferences suggested that
a reorientation in Danish design was needed, but the network did little
to ensure this would happen. In the mid-1960s, the furniture that Finn
Juhls furniture had designed for Niels Vodder was no longer selling,
and in 1969 Georg Jensen, who had been among the first to introduce
Danish Modern to the American market in 1948, dropped the line be
cause its pieces, which were no longer popular, were now considered
"period reproductions."103
The construction of Danish Modern was a critical aspect of the
marketing of Danish furniture from the 1930s to the late 1950s. In the long
run, however, this framework became a constraint that limited the
actors' strategic choices and constituted an impediment to their capac
ity to come up with new designs, production methods, materials, and
technology.
The boundaries between handicraft and industry started to blur in
the late 1950s. The cabinetmakers were craftsmen, and proud of it, but
around i960 increasing competitive pressures forced them to consider
how to survive. They held meetings to discuss the situation but contin
ued to cling to the strategy of cooperation between traditional cabinet
makers and modern architects. Although most architects had begun to
collaborate with the furniture industry, only a few members of the net
work challenged the viability of this alliance. The cabinetmakers' re
sponse was to insist on the narrative, adhering to the ideals of crafts
manship and quality and continuing to work in wood.
With increasing labor costs, changing consumer preferences, and
products that were no longer new, it was obvious that changes had to be
made, but the guild's members were constrained by four hundred years
of tradition. For example, in 1958, when Johannes Hansen moved out
of central Copenhagen to a more spacious workshop, he felt the need to
explain himself. He invited his colleagues to attend the opening, where
he described the move as necessary in order to accommodate the ma
chinery for mass-producing furniture.104
103Skjerven, Goodwill for Scandinavian Design. Regarding Finn Juhl's furniture, see
Hansen, Da danske mebler.
104 The invitation is in the Danish Business Archive, archive of "Thorald Madsens Snedkeri,"
box "1912-72: Diverse sager."

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Hansen assured his colleagues that he was not becoming an indus

trialist. When a reporter asked him, in 1955, how many of his "Horn
back" chair he had produced, he jokingly declined to respond, citing a
fear that his colleagues would no longer consider him a cabinetmaker if
he revealed the number. He then admitted that he had produced three
thousand of the chairs since 1952, but he assured the reporter that every
one was made by a skilled cabinetmaker. This exchange illustrates the
increasing contradictions in the cabinetmakers' narrative as they came
to rely more on machinery in producing their furniture.105
Hansen's workshop continued to operate for many years after the
move to new quarters, mainly because of the international popularity of
Hans Wegner's furniture. However, by the end of the 1960s, many guild
cabinetmakers had left the furniture business. This was partly a genera
tional problem. Even the workshops that were taken over by cabinet
makers' sons were caught in a cycle of increasing costs, falling demand,
and an unwillingness to convert to industrial production. In contrast,
many provincial cabinetmakers who were not members of the guild
turned their workshops into industrial furniture factories. The decline
of the cabinetmakers could be viewed as part of the Schumpeterian
process of creative destruction, but it was incomplete, because no new
entrepreneurs emerged to assume leadership.
There were exceptions, but generally neither the industrial manu
facturers nor the designers adopted new materials and methods. Innova
tive designs poured out of Finland and Italy, but Denmark was unable to
keep up its earlier pace. The architects' cabinetmaking background and
strong attachment to traditional production prevented them from using
new materials such as steel, fiberglass, and plastic in their designs. Even
the designs they produced for the furniture industry adhered to the
cabinetmakers' furniture styles. Finally, the concept of scientific furni
ture, which was nurtured by parts of the network, faltered as the mod
ernist narrative of progress, growth, and social engineering gave way to
the subcultures and alternative lifestyles of the 1960s.106
The industry's inability to innovate and to promote furniture design
in different traditions or to employ new materials became apparent when
the designers Verner Panton and Poul Kjaerholm, who did use plastic
and steel, had to search for producers. Conversion to new designs, tech
nologies, materials, and methods of production also presented barriers
of costs and knowledge. Nevertheless, the most important constraint
was the framing of Danish Design. The path followed by Danish Mod
105 "En haandsnedker bruger da maskiner," Politiken, 20 Feb. 1955.

106 See Holt, "Why Do Brands Cause Trouble?"; Hansen, Da danske mobler; and Hanne
Horsfeld, "Innovations?Fusions?Provocations: Verner Panton's Seating, 1955-1970," Scan
dinavian Journal of Design History 8 (1998): 44-79.

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Per H. Hansen / 480
ern bore out theorist Karl Weick's observation that, over time, actors in
organizations develop a "trained incapacity to see the world differ
ently."107 Many of the established designers and producers could not
imagine creating furniture that fell outside the Danish Modern tradi
tion. Panton had to go abroad to have many of his designs produced,
and at home both he and Kjaerholm were forced to rely on new compa
nies that had been established for the sole purpose of manufacturing
their designs.108
When the industry ran into problems, it fell back on old formulas. A
comprehensive change in production methods, materials, and styles would
have required them to adopt an alternative narrative. Not surprisingly,
people outside the network developed their own expectations. In 1957 the
American designer and craftsman Jack Lenor Larsen reviewed the im
portant Triennale in Milan for Interiors. He described one of Kjaerholm's
chairs, the PK22, that was on exhibit there as representing
a Danish trend exactly in reverse to the Danish look we have grown

accustomed to. Instead of the Scandinavian warmth and informal
ity, we have dressiness, elegance, impersonality. Instead of wood,
there is metal?steel construction. Instead of the reliance on the
sensitive hand of the craftsman, we see an international look. The
question is whether this overwhelming success of the international
style in Denmark makes sense economically in a country rich in
wood and in wood craftsmanship.109
Even in the 1970s consumers had certain expectations of Danish

design. The managing director of Bang & Olufsen, the Danish high-end
audio and television equipment manufacturer, for example, insisted
that the company's radio and television models had to be equipped
with rosewood panels. The use of wood had been imposed upon B&O
by "the furniture industry because it has created an international image.
We are forced to use these symbols in order to belong to the Scandina
vian Design tradition."110 The Danish Modern format had been locked
in place, not only by the network of producers and designers but also by
consumers.111
107 Karl Weick, "Sensemaking in Organizations: Small Structures with Large Conse
quences," in Karl Weick, Making Sense of the Organization, 2nd ed. (Maiden, Mass., 2001;
first ed., 1993), 3-31.
108 Horsfeld, Innovations?Fusions; Harlang, Poul Kjserholm; and Hansen, Da Danske
Mebler.
109 Jack Lenor Larsen, "Furniture, Italian and International," Interiors (Nov. 1957): 112-16.
110 Per Arnoldi and Torben Schmidt, "De beslutningsdygtige. Samtale med Jens Bang,"
Mobilia (July 1970).
111 Blaszczyk, in Imagining Consumers, argues that producers took notice of consumer pref
erences. The case of Danish Modern seems to indicate, however, that this was a complicated
dialectic that led to the lock-in of design "type forms." See Molotch, Where Stuff Comes From,
for the concept of "type form" and a discussion of consumers' resistance to changes in design.

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This is only part of the story, however. Around 1970, many con
sumers began to consider Danish Modern unfashionable. The furniture
produced by the cabinetmakers was supposed to last a lifetime, but
consumer incomes had increased, and as taste and lifestyles changed,
fewer people wanted to keep their furniture for so long. Furniture be
came part of a fashion cycle, and avant-garde consumers welcomed
new trends and new materials, such as steel and plastic.112 In 1968, the
critic Svend Erik Moller wrote that Danish furniture was losing the
fight for its existence because it was failing to renew itself. Some manu
facturers and designers agreed, and the industry proposed setting up a
special laboratory where a skilled cabinetmaker could experiment with
new forms and materials.113 However, it was not more cabinetmaking
that was needed, but a comprehensive reframing of Danish Design.
This did not happen. Instead the organizations that had been instru
mental in Danish Modern's success since the 1930s were deteriorating.
The Network Falls Apart.114 Den Permanente was the single most
important outlet for the cabinetmakers. Since 1931 they had enjoyed a
monopoly on the furniture sold by Den Permanente, but around i960
its management wanted to begin selling high-quality pieces made by
furniture manufacturers working with the architects who had at one
time collaborated with the cabinetmakers. By 1962-63, the conflict
with the cabinetmakers subsided, but its existence demonstrated that
the distinction between industrial and handcrafted furniture was no
longer meaningful.
Den Permanente's revenue had been stagnating since i960, and in
1962 it received further economic blows when Denmark abolished the
subsidy for exports that earned U.S. dollars and the United States re
duced its customs exemption from $500 to $100. At this point, the
management decided to accept industrially manufactured furniture.
When their protests had no effect, the cabinetmakers left the organiza
tion in 1963 and set up a joint sales exhibition, called Danske Snedker
mestermobler (Danish Cabinetmakers' Furniture). Den Permanente
began accepting some of the most prominent manufactured furniture,
but the rift had damaged the reputations of both the organization and
the cabinetmakers. It also signaled the degree to which the narrative
had turned into an obstacle. The cabinetmakers' new sales organization
never succeeded in uniting the members, and Den Permanente suffered
from the general decline of Danish Design. Although the exhibitor con
tinued to operate until 1983, its golden period ended in the mid-1960s.
112 See also Madigan and Munro, "House Beautiful."

114 Most of this section is from Hansen, Da danske mobler.

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Per H. Hansen / 482
The Cabinetmakers' Guild Exhibitions also ran into problems. The

sense of energy and passion that had fueled its activities since the inter
war period was overwhelmed by confusion and the lack of a feasible
strategy. Its final exhibition was held in 1966, but the cabinetmakers
never gave up on the idea that cooperation between cabinetmakers and
architects was the solution to the crisis in which they found themselves.
Finally, the Danish Society of Arts and Crafts, which had guided
and orchestrated the network's efforts for so long, fell into a state of
disagreement over how much commercialism to allow in its activities.
Plans for holding a Design in Scandinavia exhibition in Australia in
1968 revealed the schism between proponents of the network's becom
ing a fashion medium and adherents to the traditional normative vi
sion. Summing up the latter group's view, architect Arne Karlsen, a
Klint student and an influential critic, complained, "The art of selling is
valued higher than the art of creation."115
The conflicts that swirled around these three important organiza
tions demonstrated the changed character of the social network. By the
end of the 1960s, Danish Modern's period of international had ended,
and no new direction had been plotted. The passion and cohesion that
had enabled the network to conquer the world beyond Denmark had
been replaced by fragmentation and disarray.
At the end of the day, the rift between the traditional concept of
Danish Modern and the new signals from a changing world under
mined Danish Design's standing as an international and innovative
brand. Indeed, the divide continues today. In August and September of
2004, several teachers and students at Danmarks Designskole (The
Danish School of Design) protested the school's plan to become a de
sign university, thereby abandoning its traditional emphasis on craft
and practical experience and replacing it with a more theoretical educa
tion. One newspaper reported: "Teachers, students and designers fear
that Danmarks Designskole ruins the craftsman-based heritage that
forms the basis for Danish Design."116
Final Remarks
In this article, I have argued that the rise and fall of Danish modern
furniture is best understood when analyzed in a narrative framework.
The "story" of Danish Modern was not simply a marketing or branding
tool but constituted the framework that enabled members of a social
network to make sense of their activities. Over the long term, however,
the narrative constrained the ability of both designers and producers to
115 Hansen, Da danske mebler, 560.

116 Jens Lenler, "Designopror: Dansk handva?rk trues," Politiken, 31 Aug. 2004.

154.59.125.34 on Mon, 03 May 2021 15:05:49 UTC
renew their designs and production methods once the life cycle of Dan
ish Modern had run its course. When the brand encountered competi
tive pressure in the 1960s, the network began to search for ways to
counteract what its members sensibly perceived to be threats to its sta
tus. However, because they were unable to escape the confines of their
own narrative, they could not visualize new solutions.
Companies, knowingly or unknowingly, use history every day in
branding and in establishing corporate culture and identity. They do so
because human beings and organizations use historical narratives to
make sense of the past and the present. Since narratives form the foun
dation of our understanding, business historians are well advised to
include them in their historical analyses of firms.
One way of analyzing the use of narratives by firms is to employ the
strategies that have been developed under the umbrella of the "linguis
tic turn" and constructivism. This approach is increasingly relevant to
business history as marketing and branding assume growing impor
tance in the activities of global and local companies and as they try to
attract the attention of consumers by telling stories that correspond
with, and contribute to, consumers' perceived identities and lifestyles.117
Business historians who want to understand these activities cannot rely
on traditional, "realist" approaches. Instead, these business historians
should embrace constructivist, analytical strategies in order to ask new
and different questions, and they should shift their perspective from
merely understanding the wants and needs of consumers to exploring
the construction of meaning and identity.118
117 See, for instance, Douglas B. Holt and Juliet B. Schor, "Do Americans Consume Too
Much?" in Douglas B. Holt and Juliet B. Schor, eds., The Consumer Society Reader (New
York, 2000), vii-xxiii; George Ritzer, "Introduction," in Jean Baudrillard, The Consumer So
ciety. Myths & Structures (Thousand Oaks, Calif., 1998; French ed., 1970), 1-23. See also
James B. Twitchell, Branded Nation: The Marketing of Megachurch, College Inc., and
Museumworld (New York, 2004); Holt, How Brands Become Icons; and McCracken, Cul
ture and Consumption II.
118 For some further discussion, see Barbara Czarniawska, Narratives in Social Science
Research (Thousand Oaks, Calif., 2004); David M. Boje, Narrative Methods for Organiza
tional and Communication Research (Thousand Oaks, Calif., 2001); and Niels Akerstrom
Andersen, Discursive Analytical Strategies: Understanding Foucault, Koselleck, Laclau and
Luhman (Bristol, 2003).

154.59.125.34 on Mon, 03 May 2021 15:05:49 UTC

Danish Furniture Rise Andf Fall

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Networks, Narratives, and New Markets: The Rise and Decline of Danish Modern

Furniture Design, 1930-1970

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25097226

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Networks, Narratives, and New Markets:

Business History Review 80 (Autumn 2006): 449-483. ? 2006 by The Pres

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controlled by groups of individuals.11 Narratives can evoke frames, and

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their tastes, and thus their preferences.16 Therefore, it is important to

Two Subnarratives of Danish Furniture Design

Scientific Design: The Klint Subnarrative. In 1924 Kaare Klint

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design as a matter of aesthetics or form, but rather as a scientific method

18 Kaare Klint, "Undervisningen i mobeltegning ved kunstakademiet," Arkitekten 13 (1930):

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Craftsmanship: The Cabinetmakers' Subnarrative. The high point

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26 See Jalk, Dansk Mobelkunst; Povl Christiansen, Fyrretyve ar med snedkerlaugets mo

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beauty, simplicity, functionality, honesty, and quality in design and

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identified as a "handicraft," even after furniture manufacture became a

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The celebrated "Hornback" chair

^ ^ GEORG JENSEN INC^

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Juhl criticized the Klint paradigm, suggesting that Danish furniture de

Networking and Preparation of the Home Market

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Den Permanente's role as a permanent sales exhibition and pro

40 Modern Danish Industrial Art; and Hansen, Da danske mobler.

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The close connections between the Danish Society of Arts and

43 See A. J. Pulos, The American Design Adventure, 1940-1975 (Cambridge, Mass.,

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the qualities of simplicity, uniqueness, functionality, honesty, and crafts

Conquering International Markets

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Figure 1. Danish furniture export to the

tradition of working in wood, a

58D.A., "Danish Furniture: Old Hands G

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Figure 2. Composition of Denmark's furniture export, 1947-1970. (Source: StatistiskArbog,

61 Hansen, Da danske mebler.

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Danish craftsmanship," adding that Danish furniture is "the best, the

A kingdom for more than a thousand years Denmark is . . . the old

In House Beautiful, Scandinavia was represented as the "cradle of

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prove to be the most ambitious and important marketing effort ever

I wonder if any area of the world other than the Scandinavian

Energized by the exhibition's success, in 1955 the four countries es

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when House Beautiful published a special issue on "the Scandinavian

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knowledgeable observer of the American furniture market, Lazette van