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Faaborg Chair
Iconic Designs

Faaborg Chair

About the Design

A bridge between classical furniture and functionalism that ushered in Danish modern design, the 1915 Faaborg chair was the first major work by Kaare Klint (1888–1954). The chair, which was created for Denmark’s Faaborg Museum, typified the marriage of practicality and form that would come to occupy Klint’s modernist peers. The design combined old world materials and craftsmanship with a pared-down, simple approach. Klint was tasked with producing a light chair that could be moved around by museum visitors and placed in front of paintings. With the Faaborg, the Copenhagen-born designer did exactly that, and his striking work garnered immediate international recognition.

The son of prominent architect Peder Vilhelm Jensen-Klint, Kaare Klint apprenticed as an architect for his father but eventually turned to furniture, later working with cabinetmakers at his own design firm. A known perfectionist, Klint focused on the interrelationship between people and furniture. He was deeply invested in creating furniture that responded to the movements of the human body and applied a knowledge of mathematics to his work. As a professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts beginning in the mid-1920s, Klint helped establish the Furniture and Spatial Design department at the school, and taught generations of students who would go on to significantly impact the field, among them Poul Kjaerholm, Ole Wanscher and others.

Klint’s Faaborg chair was simple and rigorous, taking cues from Greek and Roman forms while dispensing with extraneous lines and detail. Originally manufactured by Rud. Rasmussen, it is currently produced by Carl Hansen. Wholly modern but openly reverent of an earlier era, this piece is portable and stable, with curved back legs and a round back borne out of Klint’s distinctive mathematical problem-solving framework.

Kaare Klint Faaborg Chair

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‘The Faaborg Chair’ designed by Kaare Klint for Rud. Rasmussen Cabinetmakers
By Kaare Klint
Located in Stockholm, SE
‘The Faaborg Chair’ designed by Kaare Klint for Rud. Rasmussen Cabinetmakers Denmark, 1914. Mahogany, woven cane and leather. Designed in 1914 for the Faaborg Museum. This example w...
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Wonderful example of Kaare Klint's famous Faaborg chair made in Denmark by master cabinetmaker Rud Rasmussens. This example in beautiful oak and natural ...
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