Museum Wegner, Tønder, Denmark
While staying with a friend at Sønderho on Fanø Island during the summer, we took the opportunity to visit the new Museum Wegner at Tønder in Southern Denmark. We had visited the original museum located in an old water tower in the town a few years ago, but I had heard that there was a new museum that would be worth a visit.
Hans Wegner was one of the preeminent Danish furniture designers of the 20th century. He was born in Tønder in 1914 and showed an interest in arts and crafts from an early age. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed to a master cabinetmaker and quickly developed an affinity with wood, making his first chair the following year. He finished his apprenticeship when he was 17 but remained with the workshop until he joined the army. While in the army he saw an exhibition of the work of the Copenhagen Cabinetmakers Guild which inspired him to become a furniture designer with the aim of designing, making and selling his own furniture.
He realised however that he needed to improve his skills and after his army service he took a cabinet making course at the Danish Technology Institute and after that he attended the School of Arts and Crafts carpentry programme (which he did not finish for various reasons) within the Danish Museum of Art and Design where he was strongly influenced by functionalism. He participated in his first Cabinetmakers Guild exhibition in 1938 where he presented his first chair design, the Stangerup chair.
His work must have come to the attention of Arne Jacobsen because in the same year (when Wegner was only 24) Jacobsen asked him to design the furniture for the Aarhus City Hall (Jacobsen and Erik Møller had won the competition for the design of the City Hall; see an earlier post for details). World War 2 delayed the Aarhus project and he worked on Nyborg Public Library, designed by Eric Møller and Flemming Lassen before returning to the Aarhus project in 1939 working on it until 1942 and designing all of the furniture and fittings.
Some of the furniture in Aarhus City Hall
In 1944 he created, for a friend, the Peter’s Chair, a children’s chair that is still in production today together with an accompanying table. In the same year he made what must be considered his most ornate piece, the Fish Cabinet for the Cabinetmakers Guild exhibition. The intention was that the piece would be made by Johannes Hansen, a master cabinetmaker but he refused because of its technically very demanding intarsia design and Wegner therefore made the piece himself allegedly using a pocketknife to cut and assemble the approximately 3,000 pieces of wood from which it was made. The exterior is fairly plain and gives no hint of what lies inside. The interior depicts a watery underworld with a perch on one door and a pike on the other and water weeds on the faces of the drawers. The workmanship is faultless and it is, to my mind, quite remarkable especially as there are at least two of them, the other one being in a design museum in Copenhagen.
The Fish Cabinet
In 1946 Wegner returned to Copenhagen where he had accepted a teaching position at the Danish School of Arts and Crafts. At the same time, he started designing chairs for a number of manufacturers including the Peacock Chair in 1947 and two of his most famous designs, the Round Chair and the Wishbone Chair in 1949. The Wishbone Chair became his greatest commercial success and it has remained in continuous production ever since.
Wegner continued to design chairs and other furniture throughout his long life eventually creating over 3,00 pieces of furniture, mainly chairs of various kinds, approximately 200 of which remain in production today. It has to be said that some of his designs are rather odd such as the large armchair finished with leather and with large ‘wings’ that he created for the US market (see furniture photos below). He won several major design prizes including the Lunning Prize, the Grand Prize of the Milan Triennale, the Swedish Prince Eugen Medal and the Danish Eckersberg Medal and in 1969 he was made an honorary designer for industry by the UK Royal Society of Arts.
The new Museum Wegner occupies farm buildings dating from the 1400s located at Hestholm outside of Wegner’s hometown of Tønder. The farmhouse and the stables have been renovated and transformed into modern exhibition facilities that include a small shop and a cafe. This is the first phase of a much larger project which will eventually construct two additional wings that will provide more gallery space for the display of Wegner’s furniture and for other exhibitions. The buildings have been designed by Cobe Architects and the vision is to create a place where architecture, landscape and Wegner’s design philosophy blend seamlessly with a focus on quality and craftsmanship.
Externally, the farmhouse has been renovated and painted, new timber windows have been provided and the roof has been rethatched. The stable buildings have also been renovated with rendered walls, new fixed timber windows (the buildings are mechanically ventilated and temperature controlled to safeguard the furniture) and galvanised, profiled steel roofs. All walls are painted white.
See the photo gallery below:
Internally all walls are painted white with floors finished with resin and the furniture mounted on platforms or hung from the ceilings. The rooms in the farmhouse have been carpeted and furnished with appropriate furniture all designed by Wegner. The exhibition spaces in what were the stables are simple but nicely detailed and very functional in line with Wegner’s philosophy. They are however very crowded (necessitating hanging furniture from the ceilings for instance) and the additional exhibition spaces, when built, will enable the furniture to be much better displayed.
See the photo gallery below:
Architecture in Developing Countries: A Resource
The design and construction of appropriate, low-cost buildings for education and health in rural areas of the developing world.
Nigel Wakeham worked as an architect for 23 years in Southern and West Africa and the SW Pacific working on education, health and other projects. He has since worked for over 20 years as a consultant for national governments and agencies such as the World Bank, DFID, ADB and AfDB on the implementation of the construction components of education and health projects in many countries in the developing world.
The objective of this website will be to provide the benefit of more than 45 years of experience of working in developing countries to architects and other construction professionals involved in the design and construction of appropriate, low-cost buildings for education and health. It will provide reference material from the projects that Nigel has worked on and technical information on the design, construction and maintenance of educational and health facilities and other relevant topics and these will be added to from time to time.
I am happy to be contacted by anyone requiring further information on any of the projects or resources referred to in this website or by anyone wishing to discuss work possibilities.
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