1949 Guild Exhibition Chair

Written and researched by Thomas Penrose

The Exhibition Chair is the first example of the Chieftain chair that was displayed to the public, at the Danish Cabinetmaker’s annual exhibition in Copenhagen in 1949. The Chieftain was designed by Finn Juhl that same year and was produced by Niels Vodder’s cabinetmaking shop after the exhibition’s jury had reviewed Juhl’s technical drawings of the chair and approved it to be included in the exhibit. It should be noted that Juhl also submitted a drawing for the settee (two-seat) version of the Chieftain chair, which was also included in this 1949 exhibition.The Chieftain chair and settee were radical furniture designs that had a number of unorthodox features. The initial technical drawings included specifications for such details as how the molded steel armrest forms were to be securely attached to the wood frame of the chair, but as the chair was developed some of these specifications changed significantly. Clearly, the challenges of making this chair were partly resolved during its construction, as opposed to it having been fully resolved in its original technical drawings. At the time of the exhibition in 1949, it is entirely possible that this chair was the only example of its kind in existence. Since part of the aim of the exhibition was to gauge critical and public response, there may have been little reason to produce any additional examples until it was determined that there was interest or demand. By all accounts, the Chieftain chair is a piece of furniture that is difficult and time consuming to produce. During the 20 odd years that the Chieftain Chair was produced by Niels Vodder it went through an evolution in its design, with small changes being made occasionally which related to either the chair’s aesthetics, or to improving its methods of construction. As the very earliest example of the Chieftain that was produced, the Exhibition Chair has a number of details that are unique to the first several chairs that were produced. Perhaps the rarest early detail of all is how the wooden strip was designed to conceal the nuts and washers that secured the steel armrests to the chair’s wooden frame. These large nuts and washers attach to the armrest’s steel bolt shafts at the bottom of the wood stretchers that the steel armrests rest on. In order to conceal this hardware from view, a wooden strip was placed over them, and secured with screws. In later Chieftains, this strip covered the entire length of the bottom of the wood armrest stretcher, from front leg to back leg. A benefit of doing it in this fashion is that the strip itself is virtually undetectable when viewing the chair, and many Chieftain owners are actually not even aware that it is a separate strip of wood until they spot the screws underneath that secure it.

(Image of full length strips)

However, with the Exhibition Chair this strip was recessed into the wooden stretcher only in the area where the nut/bolt hardware was located. As you can see in the image, the ends of this strip are clearly visible due to the 45 degree cut in its recessed end.

The only other Chieftain that we are aware of that shares this characteristic is the very early example that is owned by the Art Institute of Chicago’s museum collection. It might also be noted that of all the Chieftains we are aware of, the example owned by the Art Institute of Chicago shares the most traits with the Exhibition Chair, and was itself very likely the chair that Finn Juhl used for the exhibition of his work by the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts at Charlottenborg Palace in 1950. We know of no other chair that is more closely linked to the Exhibition Chair in terms of its details, or the early period of its production.

Another early design detail that the Exhibition Chair has involves how the top of the wooden armrest stretcher is carved to swell out at the top to provide a larger surface area for the steel armrest shell to rest on, for stability. In later versions this flaring is very smooth and continuous from the bottom of the stretcher to the top. (Image of smooth flaring of armrest stretcher from later chair)However, with the Exhibition Chair this flaring is handled in a bit more of a complex fashion, forming a more obvious “step” on the side of the stretcher, which starts a bit further back from the front as well.

Again, we are only aware of the early chair owned by the Art Institute of Chicago as having this detail, and even the early chair made for the Interior 52 exhibition in Trondheim, Norway does not have it. Another detail that is shared by a number of Chieftains made in the first several years is the use of a rubber gasket on the support block that spans the space between the bottom of the backrest and the rear chair stretcher. Additionally, this support spacer block has a sculpted oval shaped base that fits into a recessed oval mortise in the rear chair frame stretcher

(Image showing rubber gasket and sculpted, recessed base)

There are various ideas for why this flaring, oval shaped based was deemed necessary, as it is obviously a labor intensive detail to produce. One reason might hold that the large flared base gave it support from any leverage exerted on it by someone leaning against the backrest of the chair. The rubber gasket, on the other hand, might have been an attempt to respond to the “rubber shock mount” craze that was popularized by Eames shell chairs of both wood and fiberglass. In any case, the use of the rubber gasket was eliminated within several years, as was the flared “tulip” base of the support block, which came to be simply dowelled in place. This features did linger for several years before being entirely eliminated however, and are often used to identify chairs made during the first half of the 1950’s.Perhaps one of the design characteristics the the Exhibition Chair has that makes it appear most distinctive to Chieftain Chair connoisseurs is that the bottom of the backrest shell connects to the serpentine stiles alongside it at a lower position than on later chairs. This gives the backrest a more boxy, square appearance. In contrast, later Chieftains have a backrest that grows increasingly more triangular over the years, as the connection point between the stiles and the backrest shell move upward. Additionally, as the later backrests connect to the stiles at the high position, the length of the bottom portion of the backrest increases and gets longer, which gives the backrest a much more triangular backrest shape than the early chairs have.

(Images showing early vs later connection points for the backrest to the stile)

(images that illustrate the boxy early backrest, vs the triangular, chevron shaped backrest of later chairs.