Carl Hansen & Son is reintroducing Børge Mogensen's Huntsman Chair - to complement the Hunting Table. The rugged elegance of the Huntsman Chair, which helped to define Mogensen's distinctive style, works in many contexts - even as an attractive lounge chair in its own right.
Børge Mogensen's designs are renowned for their subtlety, with an emphasis on strong structures and materials of the highest quality. The Huntsman Chair, which Mogensen designed for 1950's Copenhagen Cabinetmakers' Guild Exhibition in line with its 'hunting cabin' theme, is no exception. The chair remained a showpiece until this year when Carl Hansen & Son is adding it to their collection of furniture classics.
"It is natural to focus on this great design created by Mogensen in his golden era. The chair has a quality that makes it highly relevant to the Danish design narrative, and it also complements the elegant Hunting Table perfectly," said Carl Hansen & Son CEO Knud Erik Hansen. "Børge Mogensen's aim was to create a people-centered design that would last for generations. The Huntsman Chair is a classic example of this."
The chair was originally made of smoked oak and saddle leather - two of Børge Mogensen's preferred materials. Saddle leather was a new material at that point in Mogensen's career and it made its mark, leading to a more robust expression in his designs.
Like the Hunting Table, the Huntsman Chair was originally designed for a specific environment - the hunting cabin - and yet both pieces have an inviting elegance, due in part to their angled legs and slender design, which lend them a lightness of form. Designed to fit under a dining table, the Huntsman Chair is relatively low with organically shaped armrests, so it works well as both a dining chair and a lounge chair.
The Huntsman Chair is characterized by a stringent, rational design that lets the materials speak for themselves. With his typical focus on optimizing the function of furniture and his eye for detailed craftsmanship, Børge Mogensen has designed a chair that highly unites aesthetics and sublime comfort. From the chair's soft, organic wooden frame, its angled legs, and its rounded embracing armrests to its classic mortise and tenon joints with contrasting wooden wedges, Mogensen's training as a cabinet maker is in evidence. The mortise and tenon joints in particular, which add extra strength to the chair, demand the precision of a true craftsman.
The saddle leather used in the chair's seat and backrest wraps around the wooden frame, held taut by buckles behind the back and under the seat - a characteristic design feature of Mogensen's work that bears witness to his flair for the aesthetic. The saddle leather is carefully skived for a smooth transition between layers. The flexible top edge of the leather and the swiveling backrest, mounted on brass or stainless steel brackets, optimize sitting comfort and enable flexible sitting positions.
