Finn Juhl Chieftain Chair Identification  

macmx,
Thank you so much for your offer! It would be very wonderful for this chair to return to Denmark. I am not sure how practical it would be, as the chair is so old (yet sturdy and comfortable). I will let you know what I learn from Bruun-Rasmussen.

You're welcome. Please be aware that BR will want to sell your chair and it is not the best source for you to get the best price, should you decide not to keep it.

And no, it is not difficult to ship the chair. You just need to use the correct speciality shipper. Feel free to give me a call on (917)/528/5979 if you have more questions. I am happy to help. I will have a container going from US to Denmark later this fall and it would be easy to include another item.

Placitas,
As you may have already concluded, demand for these chairs is great, with examples frequently selling for over $200,000 USD, and the current record being $674,000 at a recent London auction:
http://blog.dwr.com/2013/10/11/chieftains-chair-sells-for-679422-at-auct...
It is true your chair has its issues (the frame being solid is a great asset however), and it is hard to tell what your chair might sell for, either at auction or consigned in a high end retail environment. There are plenty of people who might hope to buy your chair for much less than they would otherwise have to pay (getting a chance to buy a Chieftain directly from the owner in a private sale is a very rare opportunity), so you will have to consider any offers carefully.

If this Chieftain chair were mine, and I were thinking of selling it, I would hold onto it until I could sort out why it is not properly marked. Until then its value is a fraction of what it would be. Not being 'normally' marked makes buyers very nervous, and that makes them close their wallets.
I would not do a single thing to alter it, not cleaning, not leather conditioning, and keep it out of sunlight. It may well be the case that re-upholstering it would diminish its value, regardless of who does the re-upholstery, because everything about the value of the chair has to do with its authenticity. It is barely even a chair anymore. Think of it as an artifact.
And I would dig in all your family's collected documents for anything relating to purchasing Danish furniture. The closer related to the chieftain the better, but I would not exclude things that don't directly pertain. There are a lot of clues in there that may help authenticate the chair, and might help solve the mystery of the missing mark.
I have it on very good authority that the 78 number is incorrect. There were roughly 2 1/2 times this number produced.
And Søren Horn never had anything to do with producing the Chieftain. Niels Roth Andersen took over Søren Horn's shop and he personally asked for the license from Juhl sometime after that. This is why when you see photos of a Chieftain with a 'SH' mark for Søren Horn it also says in smaller print Roth Andersen Efterfolger.
Finally, Ivan Schlechter produced the Chieftain after Niels Vodder closed his shop. There are very few of these Chieftains around, as they did not sell well at all in that time period (mid 70s to mid 80s). Ivan Schlechter chieftains are very similar, if not virtually identical, to Niels Vodder Chieftains.

In your collective experience, why do you think so few of these chairs sold at auction include an ottoman? Is the presence of an ottoman a clue in terms of assigning a year to the production of the chair?

Placitas,
The Finn Juhl designed ottomans like yours are quite rare. I have never seen a catalog entry or other period ad or period furniture exhibition photo showing the chair with an ottoman, so it was never really a "set" in the same way that some other lounge chairs (recliners especially) had a corresponding ottoman bought with the chair. There may be a record, or dated photo showing the ottoman that might establish how early it was made, but things like that are not easy to come by with Vodder's production, as such records are scarce.

The ottoman is a very odd thing.
The 1949 exhibition photos of the chair, and all subsequent advertising literature that I've ever seen (and that is probably a few dozen catalogs with the Chieftain in them) never show an ottoman with it. I think Baker offered an ottoman in the 90s, and they may have offered on in the 50s. I have a few pages of a 50s Baker catalog with the Chieftain in it, and it is not shown with an ottoman. Another page however offers a 'bench' that looks like a Chieftain ottoman with side stretchers and a cross stretcher for extra strength to hold a person instead of just feet. This same bench design, made by Niels Vodder, has been sold by Bruun-Rasmussen as a Chieftain footstool. Regardless, I have definitely seen more Baker footstools than Niels Vodder ones.
Bruun-Rasmussen has auctioned at least one other Niels Vodder Chieftain with a footstool (not the 'bench'), so we know that Niels Vodder did make such a thing.
I attribute the lack of footstools accompanying Chieftains to advertising as I mentioned above. I.e. people tend to want just what they see in the photos. Perhaps Americans are more fond of footstools/ottomans (hence there are more Baker footstools), so your grandmother made a point of ordering it.
I am afraid that it is probably not helpful in terms of dating it. At least not with the present level of information that I know of. I have a Niels Vodder catalog from 1956 and it does not show the footstool in it anywhere. Perhaps if there were more known Niels Vodder catalogs one would show it, and that might, maybe be suggestive. But I would not be surprised if the footstool was never in the Niels Vodder catalog, and you just had to know to ask if there was a matching footstool you could order too.

Here are a couple of photos of Finn Juhl's house that show this ottoman design, although not next to the Chieftain but a lounge chair design of which I am not familiar. These are from the OneCollection brochure. I'll check my Finn Juhl house book later tonight to see if it makes an appearance there.
While most of the furniture in the house was made by Vodder, there are also pieces made by other manufacturers.
Edit: I should probably say "similar" instead of the same, as when I compare the two again, the proportions of the upholstered area might be a little different between the two.

It is interesting to note that Bruun-Rasmussen has auctioned a Cheiftain with a 'matching' bench/footstool that were acquired and used together; however, when they put together the catalog they separated the two. Perhaps that is because it was the 'bench' and not the true footstool, or perhaps they had some other motive.
Look at lots 831 and 1051 in this catalog. They went together:
http://www.bruun-rasmussen.dk/vfs/catalogues/831/831_finn-juhl
(The note about them going together is missing from the PDF catalog, but it is here: http://www.bruun-rasmussen.dk/item-link.do?iid=300477457&mode=detail).
Here for comparison is true 'footstool' like yours:
http://www.bruun-rasmussen.dk/sold-items.do?iid=300586813&mode=detail

Some chairs are inextricably linked to their ottomans. Any collector who has ended up with an Eames lounge or Wegner Pape Bear that is missing its ottoman quite likely feels like something is missing, and ends up trying to find an ottoman to make a complete pairing. It would not surprise me if Finn Juhl never wanted the Chieftain chair to ever be thought of in that way, and that it would diminish the chair's status as a powerful, iconic thing in itself, that stood alone as a work of art and sculpture. I suspect a conscious decision was made to never market the chair with an ottoman.

Makes sense to me. Here are all the photos of the Chieftain in the 1956 Niels Vodder catalog.

It might have come from there. The Danish Furniture Index offers up the same questionable information.

cdsilva, did the number 78 come from the 1996 book Danish Chairs by Noritsugu Oda? It's too bad the book did not include the usual bibliography that lists the sources of the books contents. Maybe try contacting the author, Oda is a respected figure in Danish furniture history and maybe even after 20 years, he must have kept records of his research materials for that book.
edit:  added the acknowledgements page and a page of the afterword.
Noritsugu Oda's website Oda Collection Organization is unfortunately only available in Japanese.

The page in Oda's book mentions that of the 78 chairs, "most" went to museums or Danish embassies. This presumably leaves very few (less than half) left over for purchase at retail, yet major catalogs such as Illums Bolighus, Excellent Furniture Co., and Den Permanente listed the Chieftain chair for sale well into the 60's. The Excellent Furniture Co. catalog of 1962 shows the price being $243 usd, which is only about $2000 in current dollars, which is not outrageously expensive for the time. The price was probably comparable to an Eames 670/671, and perhaps a bit less. The price was also nearly identical to the cost of a Wegner Papa Bear chair and ottoman. Clearly, far fewer Vodder Chieftain chairs were sold in the USA than Eames lounge chairs or Papa Bear chairs, but one would think that more than 30 Vodder Chieftain chairs would have sold over that many years, since the market also included Europe. So, the figure of 78 chairs does get a bit hard to swallow.