CH24 Wishbone Chair for future design enthusiasts
To celebrate Hans J. Wegner's 1 10. birthday on 2. April 2024, Carl Hansen & Søn proudly presents the first edition of his iconic CH24 Wishbone chair for children, after many years on the drawing board. Designed in 1949, the chair is now CH24 Wishbone Chair is now available in a version suitable for children from the age of three. Although smaller, the chair is no less complex to make, as scaling it down was particularly challenging. The individual components cannot simply be scaled down in the same proportion; each component requires its own precise dimensions to maintain the original expression of the chair while balancing proportions to achieve the perfect result.
The CH24 Children's Wishbone Chair is available from 2. April 2024.
Among Danish furniture designers, Hans J. Wegner is considered one of the most creative, innovative and productive. Hans J. Wegner was part of the spectacular generation that created the first wave of Danish modernism. "Many foreigners have asked me how we created the Danish style," Wegner once said. "And I have answered that it was a continuous process of purification and simplification - to reduce to the simplest design of four legs, a seat and a combined back and armrest."
The core of Wegner's legacy lies in his focus on showing the inner soul of the furniture pieces through a simple and functional exterior. The son of a shoemaker, Wegner was born in 1914 in Tønder, a town in the south of Denmark. He began his apprenticeship with the Danish master carpenter H.F. Stahlberg when he was only 14 years old. He later moved to Copenhagen and attended the School of Arts and Crafts from 1936 to 1938 before establishing himself as a furniture designer.
The back and armrests of the Wishbone Chair are made from a single piece of wood. To stabilize the steam-bent back and maximize its comfort, Wegner developed the characteristic wishbone-shaped backrest after which the chair is named. For the seat, Wegner chose paper rope fabric, a choice necessitated by the post-war shortage of the traditional materials used to make chair seats, such as leather, textile and wood. After working with paper rope for several years, he became so enamored with its appearance and qualities that an improvised solution became his preferred choice.
Like the original, the CH24 Children's Wishbone Chair consists of fourteen components that require more than a hundred production steps to manufacture and assemble each chair, most of which are done by hand. The seat is woven in an envelope pattern with 75 meters of paper rope. The diameter of the paper rope is also reduced to achieve a lighter expression that matches the smaller dimensions of the chair. It takes an experienced craftsman one hour to weave the seat by hand, and all processes are carried out at Carl Hansen & Søn's factory in Gelsted, Denmark. Available in FSCTM-certified oak with oil. The chair meets the safety requirements and test methods (EN 17191:2021) for children's furniture and child seats.
"Beautiful design and excellent craftsmanship are timeless, so we are very pleased to present the CH24 Children's Wishbone Chair. This smaller version of the Wishbone Chair blends in perfectly with the rest of a household's furniture and is an ideal gift idea for future design enthusiasts." Knud Erik Hansen, CEO & 3. Generation of Carl Hansen & Søn.
Warning: Not suitable for children aged less than 36 months.