Very nice. I'm not sure I know what's going on with the backrest supports, but everything else about those chairs points towards small scale old production: 1) framed seat rather than plywood, 2) jute webbing, 3) cotton batting and straw padding, 4) nails for the upholstery. It would be great to find another example somewhere that had the same details.
Here is the photo from the Grete Jalk guild exhibition books. It hadn't occurred to me until right now that that photo is not of the example from the guild exhibit, but rather a later chair. Most of the photos in those volumes are of the guild booths, but there are exceptions made to add later photographs to show a design in greater detail. A good example of this is the Niels Vodder 1945 booth and the 45 chair. The exhibit chair can be seen in the booth photo. On the opposite page is a large photo of an isolated 45 chair, which is clearly different from the guild photo.
If I had to take a guess, I would say that your chairs were made by Povl Dinesen (the cabinetmaker shop, not necessarily himself personally), not too long after the 1957 exhibit. There is obviously a lot of missing info, which might render my guess wrong. I would love to see blowup details of all the joints, if you have the time. Even how the underside of the side rails flair out where the rear seat rail connects indicates cabinetmaker-level attention to detail. If any joints are loose, it would be great to know if they are doweled or mortise-and-tenon.
Yes, the screws look old, but you can find brass slotted head screws fairly easily these days. I wouldn't be too concerned either way about those. A company started making new versions of the Buck chair and stool a few years ago. I'm not sure whether Buck's heirs are associated with it, but you might try sending them a batch of photos to see if it matches anything in their archives. https://www.erikbuch.com/pages/about
Thanks for the tip - I will send them some photos and see if they respond. For what it's worth, I found these in a small town in Texas, but it is located about 25 miles from a major Army base. Maybe some Army officer bought these from Mr. Dinesen while stationed in Germany in the late 50's and brought them back to Texas.
I doubt you will learn anything from the current producers but it is worth a try. As cdsilva said this has all the hallmarks of actually being Povl Dinesen cabinetmaker construction. I suppose it is possible it is the prototype from the Guild but I doubt it. I believe PD produced it for a time. And it certainly makes sense that it showed up in Texas bought in Germany. To make sense this requires some background: before the War the distinguishing feature of a cabinetmaker was that he sold his furniture to retail customers, directly. He might have had a little showroom or maybe even a big showroom if he was successful or many just sold from their shop. A factory by contrast sold wholesale to retailers. We like to think the difference was related to handmade vs machine production but the machines were really a result of success allowing the purchase of machinery allowing lower prices allowing greater selling opportunities including at a wholesale price point. I don’t know how exactly Dinesen got started selling to American military personnel specifically but I guess it had to be because he had something of a showroom of his own as a cabinetmaker. Eventually he started buying from factories wholesale and selling at retail and became much more of a retailer than a cabinetmaker even though he continued allying himself ‘cabinetmaker’. He made a bench into the 1960s, also a dining table, and China cabinets to go on top of popular sideboards that didn’t come with that option. And Germany and specifically Wiesbaden was where the US Air Force command was so Dinesen opened a showroom there. Johannes Aasbjerg had much the same business model and also had a showroom in Wiesbaden and a few other cities in Germany. So stuff sold by Dinesen and Aasbjerg shows up in places in the USA where high level military were from, wanted to retire to, or found later jobs. There is a tradition of military service in the South and there is NASA in Houston where high level Air Force person ended up employed so that is two indicators for Texas generally. Washington DC and its environs have more than most places. Also Southern California and Florida and Arizona (retirement). There is less in places like Chicago or Boston.
Here is a Povl Dinesen advertisement from 1956. Note this is from prior to the 1957 Guild Exhibition when it was displayed.
I once owned a matching model 50 armchair that was probably from 1959. It was like the later Odense Maskinsnedkeri version with two exceptions: 1 it was built with doweled butt joints not the router cut finger joints you usually see and 2 it had a heat branded Danish Furnituremakers’ Control. I believe this was the earlier OM version.
So PD was probably making and selling this design from 1956 to 58/59. This would mean there are probably a few out there but only one was the prototype.
And American military people were just starting to buy danish furniture then so PD would not have sold many to them. The other way he could have sold was through Den Permanente. DP was a cooperative that looked from the outside to a buyer like a “retailer” but legally it was not. It sold pieces as a sales agent on a commission basis, perhaps around 15% then.
I think @mvc is trying to say nonverbally that there is a challenge in the fact that your chair looks different than the PD or OM chairs. It is well outside the range of variation we might see in a cabinetmaker piece where we can expect variation. It might also be something that has nothing to do with Erik Buck or Povl Dinesen. It could be all sorts of things, really. Hopefully some of the information added to this thread will give you the state of knowledge collectively here on the PD and OM versions of the Erik Buck design.
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