Juhl pinned classical inspiration to the bulletin board next to his desk.
Covers: Juhl’s 1948 watercolor renderings of his Whiskey chair (front) and NV48 settee (back).
Image courtesy of: Design Museum Denmark
Photography by: Pernille Klemp
Shapes of the Chieftain chair recall shields of warriors.
Juhl allotted half of the main bedroom to a sitting area near the fireplace. The multicolored cabinet in the foreground was designed expressly for gloves.
WITH HIS OWN HOUSE, FINN JUHL FASHIONED A NEW MODEL FOR DOMESTIC DESIGN THAT EXTENDED FAR BEYOND DENMARK.
Sometimes, ignorance is bliss and sometimes it’s just plain useful. Because Finn Juhl was trained as an architect and not a cabinetmaker, he—today, one of Denmark’s most notable and inventive designers—approached furniture design initially unencumbered by such nagging concerns as strength and structure. That was for his steady collaborator, master joiner Niels Vodder, to work out.
Rather, Juhl’s unconventional furniture designs were driven by an organic sculptural vision, an architectural exploration of loadbearing elements versus flat planes, and a preoccupation with forms designed to comfortably accommodate the human body. In designing chairs, for which he is best known, Juhl choreographed a dance between the frame and the upholstery, the carrying and the carried, the seat and the sitter.
Furniture, art and a sensitivity to human dimension and desires were absolutely central to Juhl’s creative life. No surprise then that they were also the building blocks
of the house he fashioned for himself in the Copenhagen suburb of Charlottenlund. The 30-year-old Juhl designed it from the inside out, unfettered by floor plan and elevation; rather, his vision for furniture arrangements drove the shape and orientation of rooms and the placement of windows.
IN DESIGNING CHAIRS, JUHL CHOREOGRAPHED A DANCE BETWEEN THE FRAME AND THE UPHOLSTERY, THE CARRYING AND THE CARRIED, THE SEAT AND THE SITTER
The end result was a dwelling whose modest size, a well-considered 2200-square feet, belies its enormous influence. What seems unremarkable now was radical for 1942 when construction was completed. Essentially an L-shaped building composed of two rectangular boxes joined by a lower,
largely transparent, connector, the open plan of the split-story house was entirely new in Denmark. Moreover, the house was a complete Gesamtkunstwerk, a total work of art, in which no single element—interior, exterior, furnishings, art—dominated but instead complemented each other in support of a fully realized whole.
Trained in architecture, famous for furniture design, Juhl excelled where the two disciplines overlap, in interior design. For him, a house was simply a building. What turned it into a home was warmth, comfort and visual delights, with art playing no small part, especially in his own home. Juhl’s first passion—art history— is evident in his expansive art collection, paintings whose color and composition were as elemental as three-dimensional form in directing design decisions.
At the home where he lived and worked for decades until his death in 1989, pale walls, mostly white, unite spaces that flow into each other. But the ceiling of each room is painted a distinct color, an approach which was and
Colors in the living room unite in a 1938 still life by Vilhelm Lundstrøm.remains highly unusual. In the entry, an Yves Klein blue overhead is a bright cap to a humble space, the preamble to furnishings in the glassy garden room just beyond: cushions on a chair and built-in banquette done up in marine blue and a graphic rug in blue and orange by textile artist and colorist Anna Thommesen.
In the dining room, a deep mustard is just the hue to amplify candlelight, while the emerald green upholstery of Juhl’s distinctive Egyptian chair references verdant shades in a painting by Richard Mortensen. In a small bedroom, a deep green visually lowers the ceiling, making a compact space even cozier while connecting to the foliage-filled view framed by the room’s single window.
A warm bisque ceiling, evoking sunlight coming through a canvas tent, floats over the discrete lounge, work and dining areas of the living room, itself an I-shaped space. His clusters of intimate, humanscaled groupings of furniture in an open space is today a familiar arrangement, but when the room debuted the configuration was strikingly original. In 2019, The New York Times included the living room as one of history’s 25 most enduring and influential spaces. Design journalist Suzanne Slesin, one of six jurors who selected the spaces, neatly summed up why: “The art, the furniture, the space, everything is of one mind and very, very simple and modest, but extraordinary…a typical Scandinavian mind-set.”
One mind indeed. Juhl celebrated the work of artists such as painter Vilhelm Lundstrøm, sculptor Erik Thommesen and textile artist Vibeke Klint by making their works stars in compositions of furnishings that he massaged over the years. But every stick of furniture in the house, as well as smaller objects like dinnerware and cutlery, sprang from his own robust imagination. No design choice was inconsequential and he had decades to consider and reconsider how art and objects, furniture and color, sightlines from room to room and views out to the garden by landscape designer Troels Erstad, all played off each other.
The seamlessness of Juhl’s work and home life are most apparent in a living room corner where he worked at a desk set perpendicular to the wall, seated in his supremely comfortable FJ46 chair. Bookcases filled with art and architecture tomes in four languages were in easy reach, as was a bulletin board where he could pin up inspiration and sketches of works in progress.
JUHL
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Right, above: A bust of Juhl’s companion, Hanne Wilhelm Hansen, as a child sits on a plinth next to his bed Right: Juhl’s Egyptian dining chairs replaced Windsor chairs he originally used around his Judas table. SLEPT ON THIS MODEST BED NEARLY YEARS AFFORDING LONGTIME COMPANION , HANNE WILHELM HANSEN, EXCLUSIVE USE OF THE PRIMARY SUITE.
A glass vitrine room divider holds china Juhl designed as well as ceramic pieces by artists he admired.
A hearth of bricks set flush with the pine floors rolls out like a carpet for the seating area. Above Juhl’s Poet sofa hangs Vilhelm Lundstrøm’s iconic portrait of Hanne Wilhelm Hansen.
When he wanted to take a break, he could shift to the alcove section of the room where a dining height table pulls up to a wall-to-wall banquette cum sofa. At the head of the table sat his FJ44 chair, otherwise known as “The Bone chair.” An elegantly organic, beautifully balanced form made of Cuban mahogany with a leather seat, the chair was notoriously difficult to produce; only a dozen were ever made.
From his desk, Juhl’s view took in a progression of spaces: the fireplace section of the living room, the garden room, and on through a glass vitrine room divider into the dining room. It is this view of the living room that is the most iconic as it features Lundstrøm’s magnificent portrait of Juhl’s longtime companion Hanne Wilhelm Hansen. The strong yellows and blues of the painting are a colorful beacon overlooking a mostly monochromatic seating area, but it is the rounded contours of Hansen’s body that resonate with the furnishings.
That portrait hangs above Juhl’s softly cocooning Poet sofa from 1941 and his most commanding chair, the Chieftain, both flanking a sculptural plaster fireplace hood. Inspired by art and objects from indigenous cultures in Africa and Oceania, the chair is a biomorphic masterpiece that put Neils Vodder’s skills to the ultimate test, demanding from the wood frame everything it could tolerate.
Embraced by the Chieftain’s generous arms, Juhl could take in the warmth of the fire and the broad view of the garden through large windows opposite the fireplace and celebrate what he described as the most important feature of any chair: “the people who in turn have to sit in it, and without whom it is a dead thing, but with whom it becomes a pleasant everyday object.” For all his milestones in furniture design, Juhl remained a humanist. Or rather, because he was a humanist, his milestones endure.
Right, above: Juhl often worked at a desk he called the Drawing Board. Right: A banquette spans one wall of the living room while bookcases flanking windows line another.
Juhl worked closely with landscape architect Troels Erstad.
Juhl relaxing in his Chieftain chair, 1959
Photography by: Ulf Neilsen
In Juhl’s office, a large black and white photo captures the interior of the Trusteeship Council Chamber that Juhl designed in 1952 for the United Nations’ Headquarters.
