Finn Juhl

Finn Juhl (1912-1989) is one of the greatest exponents of the Danish school of design. A cultured and refined figure, he was the great dandy of Scandinavian design of the golden years, with complex creations with organic shapes that deviated from the rationalism prevailing in those years. Characteristics which at the time perhaps precluded him from mass success in his native Denmark, where he was somewhat overshadowed by the more accessible creations of names such as Hans J. Wegner and Børge Mogensen, but which earned him an everlasting reputation as a "trend designer for connoisseurs”, more alive today than ever. Finn Juhl, an architect by training, considered himself a self-taught designer: he had in fact started designing furnishings for his home at the end of the 1930s, then having them made by the cabinetmaker Arne Vodder with whom he formed a strong partnership. The thin padding and complex curves of the wood of his creations (partly inspired by the contemporary sculptures of Hans Arp and Alexander Calder, next to which Juhl loved to display his armchairs) long made the mass production of his furniture difficult. The first to try were the Americans, a country in which Finn Juhl found great fame starting in the 1950s: his creations produced by Baker Furniture today reach dizzying prices on the vintage market. To date, the only official producer of his furnishings is House of Finn Juhl, a brand that has carried out a meticulous action of rediscovering and cataloging his works. As an architect Finn Juhl instead worked for eleven years in Vilhelm Lauritzen's studio, from 1934 to 1945, dealing mainly with interior architecture. He then founded his own studio in Copenhagen in 1945, with which he designed among other things the interior of the Trusteeship Council Chamber at the UN headquarters in New York.