Fritz
Hansen

The collaboration between Arne Jacobsen and Fritz Hansen is one of the most significant and famous partnerships in Danish design history. It began as early as during the 1930s, when Fritz Hansen produced Arne Jacobsen’s functionalist furniture designs for Bellevue Theatre, among other projects. At this time, Fritz Hansen’s main focus was on furniture in moulded wood and tubular steel, based on German inspiration, which is also reflected in the designs Fritz Hansen produced for Arne Jacobsen.

The 1950s marks the zenith of the partnership. During time, Fritz Hansen and Arne Jacobsen developed the technology to produce his groundbreaking shell chairs in moulded plywood. The Ant from 1952 was the first of its kind, a chair with a seat and back made from a single sheet of moulded plywood. It was followed by Series 7, the Tongue, the Munkegaard chair, the T chair and the Lily. In the mid 1950s, Fritz Hansen acquired the licence to a production technology that made it possible to shape furniture freely in hard foam. Arne Jacobsen used this method to create organic furniture for the SAS Royal Hotel. The Egg and the Swan became hugely popular, and today they are recognized as iconic furniture designs, both in Denmark and around the world.

From the 1950s on, Fritz Hansen was the supplier for all of Arne Jacobsen’s major architectural projects. The Munkegaard School, Rødovre Town Hall, SAS Royal Hotel, St. Catherine’s College in Oxford and the City Hall in Mainz, Germany, were all furnished with custom-designed furniture created by Arne Jacobsen and produced by Fritz Hansen. He also developed several table series for the company: the Camping tables, the B6 series and column tables, which were put into production during the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1960s, Arne Jacobsen also created furniture designs for Fritz Hansen that were not designed for a particular architectural project but for the company’s general product selection. This includes chairs such as Oksen (the Oxe), the TV chair and Vippestolen (Tilt chair), which were not very commercially successful. Today, Fritz Hansen continues to manufacture many of Arne Jacobsen’s most famous and popular designs, and others are continually being relaunched.