Pair of Hans J. Wegner Ox Chairs, Edition AP Stolen, 1960

Part furniture and part sculpture, the Ox chair is, in fact, a practical chair, even as its playful animal-like form draws on Pablo Picasso’s 1940s-era abstract representations of bulls. Danish designer Hans J. Wegner (1914–2007) was enamored of Picasso’s work and was inspired to break from his more typical Scandinavian modern aesthetic to create this sculptural statement piece, which was eventually manufactured by A.P. Stolen. 

Raised in southern Denmark, Wegner was a cabinetmaker’s apprentice as a child, honing his skills in the workshop until early adulthood. He then studied architecture and design in Copenhagen at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts before opening his own practice in 1943. From there, Wegner went on to earn recognition not only as an influential force in modern Danish design but also as an expert in chairs, specifically. Over the course of his career, Wegner designed nearly 500 chairs, including his signature Wishbone chair— a number of which are housed in the collections of major museums, such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Die Neue Sammlung in Munich.

The 1960 Ox chair and ottoman, with its handsome leather finish and chrome-plated steel legs, became one of Wegner’s many world-renowned pieces, but it was particularly revolutionary for its bold form as well as its seductive design that allowed for multiple seating configurations. (Wegner ensured that sitters could drape their legs over the armrests and brace themselves against the “horns.”) Originally, the Ox chair was manufactured for only two years, as its unusual shape was notoriously difficult to upholster. With permission from Wegner in 1989, however, Erik Jørgensen reissued the chair and continues to produce it today.

Best known for his chairs and other seating pieces — though a master of many furniture types like sofas and tables — Hans Wegner was a prolific designer whose elegant, often ebullient, forms and devotion to the finest methods in joinery made "Danish Modern" a popular byword for stylish, well-made furniture in the mid-20th century.

Wegner considered himself a carpenter first and a furniture designer second. Like his peers Arne Jacobsen and Finn Juhl, Wegner believed that striking aesthetics in furniture were based on a foundation of practicality: a chair must be comfortable and sturdy before it is chic.

In keeping with that tenet, several of Hans Wegner’s best chair designs have their roots in traditional seating forms. The Peacock chair (designed in 1947) is a throne-like adaptation of the Windsor chair; pieces from the China chair series (begun in 1944) as well as the 1949 Wishbone chair, with its distinctive Y-shaped back splat, are derived from 17th-century Ming seating pieces, as is the upholstered Ox chair (1960). Wegner’s comfy Papa Bear chair (1951) is an almost surreally re-scaled English wingback chair.

Wegner’s most representative piece, the Round chair (1949), gained a footnote in political history when it was used on the TV stage of the first Kennedy-Nixon debate of 1960. That chair, along with Wegner’s more bravura designs — for example, the 1963 Shell chair, with its curved surfboard-shaped seat — bring a quietly sculptural presence to a room.

Wegner was a designer who revered his primary material — wood — and it shows. His wood gathers patina and character with age; every Hans Wegner piece testifies to the life it has led.

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