Fritz Hansen PK 20 wicker lounge chair designed by Poul Kjærholm

The PK20 is everything a lounge chair should be: It is as comfortable as it is stylish, and its sleek form renders it a versatile addition to almost any room. The chair’s gently curved, high-back leather-covered seat rests on a flexible, matte chromed spring steel frame. Designed by Danish furniture maker Poul Kjærholm (1929–80) for E. Kold Christensen in 1968, the PK20’s clean lines represent the ideals of minimalist modern furniture, while its adjustable headrest and scoop seat plainly signal that this piece was built for comfort.

Although the Østervrå-born Kjærholm was trained as a cabinetmaker, he admired the enduring nature of metal and enjoyed working with lightweight steel over the traditional woods that his peers preferred. Indeed, Kjærholm’s acclaimed designs are distinct from those of his Danish contemporaries such as Hans Wegner. He lauded steel for its “constructive potential” and recognized its “artistic merit,” while a rich balance emerged in his furniture’s modest melds of the alloy and natural materials like halyard rope or wicker. Similar to his well-known PK22 chair, the exposed metalwork of Kjærholm’s sculptural PK20 is tempered by the inviting organic warmth of the seat’s leather upholstery. 

For decades, Kjærholm designed numerous celebrated chairs, tables and more, and Danish manufacturer Fritz Hansen acquired the rights to the complete collection of his work in 2014. A milestone of material innovation in modern Danish furniture design, the PK20 lounge chair is part of the permanent collection at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and is available today in leather upholstery as well as in a pale gold wicker version.

When the Copenhagen-based furniture maker Fritz Hansen opened for business more than 140 years ago, the company — which today styles itself The Republic of Fritz Hansen — adhered to the traditional, time-honored Danish values of craftsmanship in woodworking and joinery. Yet thanks to the postwar innovations of Arne Jacobsen and others, Fritz Hansen would become the country’s leader in Scandinavian modern design using new, forward-looking materials and methods.

Fritz Hansen started his company in 1872, specializing in the manufacture of small furniture parts. In 1915, the firm became the first in Denmark to make chairs using steam-bent wood (a technique most familiar from birch used in the ubiquitous café chairs by Austrian maker Thonet). At the time, Fritz Hansen was best known for seating that featured curved legs and curlicue splats and referenced 18th-century Chippendale designs.

In the next few decades, the company promoted simple, plain chairs with slatted backs and cane or rush seats designed by such proto-modernist masters as Kaare Klint and Søren Hansen. Still, the most aesthetically striking piece Fritz Hansen produced in the first half of the 20th century was arguably the China chair of 1944 by Hans Wegner — and that piece, with its yoke-shaped bentwood back- and armrest, was based on seating manufactured in China during the Ming dynasty. (Wegner was moved by portraits he’d seen of Danish merchants in the Chinese chairs.) 

Everything changed in 1952 with Arne Jacobsen’s Ant chair. The collaboration between the architect and Fritz Hansen officially originated in 1934 — that year, Jacobsen created his inaugural piece for the manufacturer, the solid beechwood Bellevue chair for a restaurant commission. The Ant chair, however, was the breakthrough.

With assistance from his then-apprentice Verner Panton, Jacobsen designed the Ant chair for the cafeteria of a Danish healthcare company called Novo Nordisk. The chair was composed of a seat and backrest formed from a single piece of molded plywood attached, in its original iteration, to three tubular metal legs. Its silhouette suggests the shape of the insect’s body, and the lightweight, stackable chair and its biomorphic form became an international hit.

Jacobsen followed with more plywood successes, such as the Grand Prix chair of 1957. The following year he designed the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen and its furnishings, including the Egg chair and the Swan chair. Those two upholstered pieces, with their lush, organic frames made of fiberglass-reinforced polyurethane, have become the two chairs most emblematic of mid-20th-century cool. Moreover, the Egg and Swan led Fritz Hansen to fully embrace new man-made materials, like foam, plastic and steel wire used to realize the avant-garde creations of later generations of designers with whom the firm collaborated, such as Piet Hein, Jørn Utzon (the architect of the Sydney Opera House) and Verner Panton. If the Fritz Hansen of 1872 would not now recognize his company, today’s connoisseurs certainly do.

Find a collection of vintage Fritz Hansen tables, lounge chairs, sofas and other furniture on 1stDibs.