Carl Hansen & Son celebrates its 100th anniversary on 28 October, 2008. Only a few family-owned companies make it this far. Even fewer are the furniture manufacturers that span a century of changing tastes and technologies. But it is truly rare that the fortunes of a high-end furniture producer are so closely connected to just one designer. The cooperation between Carl Hansen & Son and Hans J. Wegner began in 1949 – and was a turning point for them both.
Carl Hansen opened his furniture workshop in Odense, Denmark in 1908 and soon became known for the high quality of his work. In the early days, the company produced bespoke furniture – including everything from dining room sets to bedroom suites. As the company grew and times changed, however, it gradually began to produce smaller series of it most popular pieces. This combination of hand craftsmanship and rational series production soon became the firm’s hallmark – and continues to set it apart today.
Until the middle of the 1940s Carl Hansen & Son cooperated with Frits Henningsen, a Danish architect and cabinetmaker, on designs of tables and chairs. It was Carl Hansen’s son, Holger Hansen, who took a chance on the groundbreaking designs of the young Hans J. Wegner.
Holger Hansen’s sales manager, Ejvind Kold Kristensen, kept a close eye on the new breed of Danish furniture designers that began to emerge in the 1940s. Kold Kristensen was especially impressed by Hans J. Wegner, whose designs won critical acclaim at exhibitions, but was relatively unknown outside of specialist circles. Kold Kristensen had no doubt that Wegner was a designer who could propel Carl Hansen & Son into the next level of growth. He approached Wegner In 1949: if Wegner wanted to reach a wider audience, he said, then the designer must move beyond yearly exhibitions and begin cooperation with furniture manufacturers who could bring his design into series production.
The collaboration between Hans J. Wegner and Carl Hansen & Son began shortly thereafter. Wegner designed four chairs especially for Carl Hansen & Son in 1949 – all of which came into production and were launched in 1950. Many more were to follow. Holger Hansen, himself a master cabinetmaker as well as a businessman, worked closely with Wegner to adapt the company’s series production to the radically different designs. Among these was the legendary Wishbone Chair which has been produced without interruption ever since.
Wegner’s designs for Carl Hansen & Son were well received and the collaboration flourished. Holger Hansen, Ejvind Kold Kristensen and Hans J. Wegner formalized their cooperation in 1951, joining with a few other Danish furniture manufacturers to form SALESCO, a unique sales and marketing company that promoted Wegner’s work both in Denmark and abroad during the 1950s and 1960s. SALESCO played an important role in promoting “Danish Modern” furniture internationally, as “Danish Design” began to capture interest around the world.
SALESCO did not last forever. First, Kold Kristensen left in order to work with another promising young designer, Poul Kjærholm. Then Holger Hansen died suddenly – and all too soon – in 1962.
Holger Hansen’s widow, Ella Hansen, kept Carl Hansen & Son in the family and led it through difficult times with the help of her dedicated staff – a remarkable achievement for a woman of her day. Her son, Jørgen Gerner Hansen, later took over management of the company.
Holger and Ella Hansen’s other son, Knud Erik Hansen, assumed leadership of the company in 2001. Since then Carl Hansen & Son has built a new, modern factory in Aarup, Denmark, where the firm continues to combine hand-crafted care with the best technologies available to produce furniture of the highest quality – efficiently and sustainably.
Today, Carl Hansen & Son continues to cooperate closely with the Hans J. Wegner Studio to introduce or re-introduce outstanding designs from the treasure chest that Wegner left behind.