A cobbler's son who trained as a cabinetmaker and designed over 500 chairs

From a small town workshop to the Wishbone chair, still woven by hand.

By Made Over Weekend · 3 min read

Hans J. Wegner was born in 1914 in Tønder, a small town in southern Denmark. His father was a cobbler. Before he ever drew a chair, Wegner learned to make furniture with his hands, in the workshop of the cabinetmaker H. F. Stahlberg. By the age of 18 he had finished four years of training there.

From 1936 to 1938 he studied at the School of Arts and Crafts in Copenhagen, where Kaare Klint taught. In 1938 he showed his work at the Copenhagen Cabinetmakers' Guild exhibition, and the same year he started designing furniture for the new Aarhus City Hall with Arne Jacobsen and Erik Møller. He opened his own design studio in 1943.

In the 1940s Holger Hansen, son of the furniture maker Carl Hansen, saw what Wegner could do and asked him to work with the company. In 1949 Wegner designed the CH24, the first model he made only for Carl Hansen & Søn. People call it the Wishbone chair, after the Y shape of its back.

How it was built

Wegner joined the back and the armrests into a single steam bent top. To hold that curved top steady and give the back support, he added the split piece in the middle, the Y that gave the chair its name. The company says more than 100 steps go into each Wishbone chair, most of them by hand. The seat alone takes a skilled craftsman about an hour to weave, using around 120 meters of paper cord. The chair has been in production without a break since 1950.

He did not stop at one. Dezeen, writing about the 2014 exhibition at Designmuseum Danmark, put his total at over 500 chairs. He kept looking for the perfect one all his life.

If only you could design just one good chair in your life... But you simply cannot

Hans J. Wegner, 1952, quoted by Dezeen

Wegner died in January 2007, aged 92.

What it teaches a weekend woodworker

Wegner was a bench craftsman before he was a designer, and the Wishbone seat shows it: no upholstery, no foam, just cord pulled tight around four rails. You can try the same idea small. Build a simple stool frame with four legs and four rails, glued and pinned. Then wrap paper cord or any strong flat cord around the rails, first front to back, then weave across from side to side, over and under. Keep the tension even and pack each row tight against the last. It takes patience more than tools.

One good chair took Wegner a lifetime of trying. One good stool can take you a weekend. Pick a simple plan, cut the frame on Saturday and weave the seat on Sunday.