So we bought this beautiful tall sideboard today. Very well built, superb details. Our has no markings except the remnants of a light blue paper label on the bottom which reads "made in denmark". The owners purchased it in Copenhagen at Den Permanente.
Online research pulls up a couple of matches. One is an ended (american) auction that shows the stamp "Povl Dinesen". The other is a European dealer who attributes it to Arne Vodder for Dinesen. Thoughts? Catalogs?
This is the piece. And the stamp from this auction : http://www.mainauctiongalleries.com/Auction-Lot.php?auction_dt=20150315&lot=089
And the attribution to Vodder from here: http://www.depot09.be/objects/vintage%20STORAGE%20DEPOT09/Philippe%20S00000972.htm
Interestingly, the stretcher base is almost identical to that of a coffee table we had recently, which I also posted a photo of. That piece is widely attributed to Tove and Edvard Kindt-Larsen for France & Daverkonen (ours had the FD mark.)
<img class="wpforo-default-i
And even more mysteriously, a set of 2 teak dining chairs from the same household may possibly be Dinesen as well. These chairs look SO much like many other Danish chairs, with their curved backs and lip... but not quite. Then there are the Lane Perception chairs, which are nearly identical, but have rougher details and sloppy joinery (plugs, buttons, etc. I suspect they copied the design from whoever made my chairs... When researching the above sideboard, I found one lone set of chairs that look identical - and they are attributed to Dinesen, here: http://www.prices4antiques.com/Furniture-Suite-Dining-Modernist-Danish-M...
Photos: my chairs, the Dinesen-attributed ones
I'd love to her your thoughts!!
Povl Dinesen did not make the sideboard.
Povl Dinesen was a cabinet maker who infrequently participated in the annual cabinet maker exhibitions. His presence was infrequent, and his booth small, and not so very widely remarked upon. One of the things he made was the first Erik Buck model 50 arm chair, the mass production of which was taken over by Oddense Maskinsnedkeri. I think that was his last exhibition. I don't know when he started retailing the product of other factories, but his business was primarily this in the early 1960s. He sold a lot of furniture to American military personnel stationed in Europe. He also designed and built a few pieces in his workshop. One of his pieces is a teak bench. Another of his designs that he made is a china cabinet that was custom sized to fit on top of the credenzas he sold, specifically the credenzas that did not offer their own matching china cabinet. Arne Vodder's credenzas for Sibast were popular, but they did not have a matching china cabinet topper, so Povl Dinesen would make one. You see these from time to time. The "matching" set with mismatched marks confuses people.
And people frequently see a Povl Dinesen mark on a piece and think that means he made it. This is rarely true. Usually it just means he retailed it, just as you see Illums Bolighus marks on many pieced retailed through it. What makes it tricky is that there are those few exceptions where PD did design and make the piece.
Look for pieces with those handles. They remind me of Rosengren Hansen, maybe.... (?)
Thanks Leif. So, would Povl Dinsesn have retailed THROUGH Den Permanente? That's where these folks bought it. He was a serviceman. Or are you saying that whoever made this piece might have sold it through both Den Permanente and Povl Dinesen, separately?
I've searched for those handles, to no avail so far except the pieces I linked. And the way the side handles are cut out of the sides of the case is very unique too. I'll keep searching.
well- for anyone else.... I ID'd the chair. I found a scanned Povl Dinesen catalog and the chairs are in it. They are Kurt Ostervig. https://www.flickr.com/photos/impulsenine/15730485164/in/album-721576500...
Thank you so much to the person that scanned and uploaded this catalog!!!
They must have bought stuff from Povl Dinesen and from Den Permanente. I imagine it is possible to forget a minor detail like that.
And no, it is not surprising that Povl Dinesen stamped pieces that he retailed but did not make. It is what the company did. And others like Illums Bolighus did the same. So did John Stuart in the USA. There are lots of examples. Anecdotally I would say that it was a minority of retailers who did this, but Povl Dinesen was certainly not unique in this regard.
Incidentally, the Kindt-Larsen ID on your coffee table is not an attribution, but an absolutely positive ID. It is the sellers who say it is "Finn Juhl" or "Kofod-Larsen" who seem to have no interest in researching anything, as the table is included in many catalogs with the designer cited.
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