Finn Juhl for Søren Willadsen  

Either @herringbone or @leif-ericson ( who loves Finn Juhl !!) can answer that question and I am sure there are other members who could also add info.

@lexi Thanks for the bat signal.

@andersen The collaboration started 1949, maybe even a bit earlier. It is unclear how Juhl and Willadsen got together, but Willadsen had already made Juhl furniture for Bovirke at that time so maybe that was the starting point. The collaboration lasted roughly five years and Willadsen produced at least 15 Finn Juhl designs. Juhl‘s collaboration with Vodder was only exclusive as far as cabinetmaker furniture was concerned. Søren Willadsen produced on an industrial level (more or less …) and therefore he stands in a line with the other furniture companies who produced Finn Juhl models, namely Bovirke (a retailer which had his furniture produced by subcontractors), France and Søn and Baker.   

Thanks for the rapid answer. It's interesting to see that the Juhl pieces by Willadsen are nearly absent from the literature of that time (is this true ?). On the Grete Jalk summary for the guild exhibitions, and on Danish magazines you find at best Niels Vodder or France and Son pieces. Is there are catalogue or reference to the Willadsen for Juhl pieces ? This leaves room for misattribution. There is a table now on Lauritz but it's unclear how true that attribution is. Cheers

@andersen you have to understand a lot about the danish furniture industry to understand why the Søren Willadsen furniture is less documented currently. There was a time when the cabinetmaker stuff was less documented until Grete Jalk compiled those volumes. And we tend to forget that her compilation of them was well after the fact and mistakes were made. For instance Finn Juhl’s 1959 exhbition booth for Niels Vodder got wrongly credited to Børge Rammeskov for JH Johansen’s (if memory serves). 

And I think that Herringbone is telling to narrow a story to separate Niels Vodder production. Most of it was literally outsourced to ‘industrial’ shops and in the case of PP Møbler, well they worked for Niels Vodder and for Bovirke. Note that Ejnar Pedersen, the owner of PP, had been Willadsen’s apprentice. The difference between Niels Vodder, Bovirke, and Willadsen was not really anything to do with production but rather to do with the economics of who they sold to and through. Niels Vodder was part of a prestigious guild and sold directly to the public, or through the cabinetmaker’s collective store, Den Permanente, which took a tiny commission on the sale) but when I say public here what this actually means was the rich, because the cabinetmakers’ prices were extremely high in following with the reputation they had cultivated historically. So if one wants to differentiate Niels Vodder production then it was different until the early 1950s, but almost everything he ever produced, was produced after that. 

Now Willadsen was the sort of maker who lived out in the provinces, where everything was cheaper than Copenhagen, and his traditional specialty had been making furniture to sell to a network of danish furniture stores and department stores, the sort of furniture that was actually sold to the public, but because it was actually the public there were a lot of them and you needed real retailer’s as your partners to get your furniture in front of their faces.  So the ultimate price was significantly lower and a retailer was taking half of it. And retailers did not like for the makers to advertise direct to the public because they did not want the public getting the bright idea of going around them to buy at ‘wholesale’. So when Willadsen advertised it was in specialized trade journals either for furniture dealers or furniture makers. And he went to furniture fairs that were attended by representatives from the retailers (and some of the clever buying public who could have the rare opportunity to see various furniture in one place and arrange a factory direct price). 

So actually in vintage documentation, Willadsen is actually quite a bit more represented than Niels Vodder ever was. It is just that the publication of the Grete Jalk books made it appear the other way around. 

And if we were to try to address the extremely complicated topic of Bovirke and Carl Brørup, here then the point could be made that Bovirke was just a brick and mortar retail store in Copenhagen, the sort that would sell Willadsen productions France and Daverkosen or many others, and once in a while since they might try to create the image of luxury they might try to represent an ultra expensive cabinetmaker piece. And to get a competitive edge selling an exclusive line of products is a good idea. But really to talk about this I would have to go into the entire story if Carl Brørup and Bovirke. 

Now France and Søn was an unabashedly industrial maker. That is entirely different than Willadsen, Bovirke, Niels Vodder, or Baker in the United States.  They were all working on some adapted or modified guild idea of how to produce furniture in era when new machine tools were constantly appearing. Charles France basically scrapped the entire idea of working in that paradigm in favor of industrial workers tending machinery that did the work. 

I suppose the one aspect of Willadsen’s visibility that I did not address is that in the 1950s the new export market completely upended the entire world and something like Mobilia appeared and Dansk Kunsthaandværk became more externally focused. France and Søn was all about the export thing so he was aggressive with advertising there. And Niels Vodder had the cachet of the ultra wealthy crowd to get attention at the Georg Jensen store in New York City. So while Niels Vodder rarely advertised the high end exhibitions he participated in attracted the right attention and he got lots for ‘earned’ free advertising through the press. 

Willadsen was much less a part of that world and he got no earned free press coverage (products for the rich and famous get all the attention), but he did place the occasional advertisement in Dansk Kunsthaandværk. Some were generally for his business and some were for specific Finn Juhl designs. This was very similar to Carl Brørup’s Bovirke that occasionally placed an advertisement. 

And returning to the Grete Jalk volumes you can perhaps see how the compilation of them at all was yet again more free ‘earned’ press coverage for the cabinetmakers.  Truly in the vintage documentation they are the most absent. Often with a cabinetmaker piece, you have either the Grete Jalk books (which are largely scanned into the Danish Furniture Index) or you have absolutely nothing and there never will be any documentation because it was never documented at all or only in a sketch that was tossed in the trash after the piece was built. 

Okay, one last thing: many of Finn Juhl’s most famous designs for ‘Bovirke’ were actually designed for Carl Brørup, and sold at his stores Bovirke and Nyt Hjem and wholesaled to some other danish furniture stores around the country. This was in the ear from 1946 to 1951 when FJ designed famous things like the BO59 lounge chair, the BO66 ‘eye table’ or the BO63 side chair and BO68 dining table, or the Bo72 armchair, or the BO55 sofa.  These designs are so scarce in the documentation from then that I think this is the first time the BO66 and BO68 have ever even been given their BO model numbers in public. And bear in mind BO was the second producer of them, so their real model numbers are entirely unknown and possibly forever, but if they followed the danish usual practices they would have been referred to as CB-XX and likely the numbers I referenced were the originals, but we don’t have any documentation to support that guess. 

The point is that there were a lot of other designs made/produced by Carl Brørup in that era that are the very hardest to find documentation on. Willadsen advertised more than Carl Brørup. Many of those Carl Brørup pieces must have sat in the showrooms at this Bovirke and Nyt Hjem stores and when they didn’t sell they just disappeared. I have one such piece which is a sewing box that ended up in the estate of Poul Lund who was the sales manager at the Bovirke store back then and interestingly based on construction I would say it was made in Willadsen’s shop. 

But the point is that these pieces were only for the fairly well off urbanites of Copenhagen so they didn’t earn press like the pieces for the ultra wealthy nor did they have a big domestic market via trade journal advertising to furniture stores in the provinces. These pieces are truly the least well documented.  

@Andersen It is of course all true what Leif said. But Willadsen’s absence from the literature might be easier to understand when you look at the literature itself. Grete Jalk‘s books about the Guild exhibition covered the exhibitions of the Copenhagen Cabinetmaker‘s guild. Of course Willadsen is not in there, his factory was located in Vejen, he wasn’t a member of the Copenhagen Guild and thus never exhibited there. And the magazines you refer to are probably the most popular ones like Mobilia and Bo Bedre? Mobilia was launched in 1955 or so, Bo Bedre in 1960. So it’s highly unlikely to find Willadsen/Juhl ads in there, that was just too late. Willadsen‘s collaboration with Finn Juhl had stopped by then, the old Willadsen died in 1956 and the manager John Lawerenz  headed in different directions. What did happen after 1956 was, that Juhl designed for France and Søn, a much much bigger and more successful company than Willadsen‘s. They often placed ads in Mobilia and later BoBedre. Willadsen did indeed advertised in Dansk Kunsthåndværk but to my knowledge they never wrote about the company. But this was not so much against Willadsen, Dansk Kunsthaandværk had a much broader focus, they also covered pottery, weavers, silversmiths and bookbinders and they rarely covered single cabinetmaker workshops. Also they often concentrated on the Copenhagen scene.  

@Andersen But you were asking about a certain table at Lauritz. Do you mean this one?

A hint here could be the stretchers. Juhl kind of invented them, he used them in the NV45 and some other chairs. I've never seen a catalog with Willadsen pieces and I don't know if there are any. But I do have some drawings from Finn Juhl from Willadsen's archive. Among them these:

There's another table up at Lauritz, also Juhl for Willadsen. I don't know anything about this one.

@herringbone yes I was referring to that one - thanks. What’s the source of these drawings? Are they original ? Really interesting!

Yes, they are original and from Søren Willadsen‘s archive which is stored in a public archive today. But I only have photos (of course).

If they were original, I would have put them on a frame !

Of course! 🙂