Ole Wanscher Model FD119 Teak Armchair France & Son Danish Mid Century Vintage Retro MCM

New Stock ✅

Ole Wanscher Model FD119 Teak Armchair France & Son Danish Mid Century Vintage Retro MCM

Crafted from solid teak, this armchair was designed by Ole Wanscher and produced by France & Son in Denmark in the 1960s.

This stunning minimalist armchair offers superb seating comfort whilst embodying everything that is beautiful about Danish design.

The original sprung cushions have been professionally reupholstered in a traditional royal blue velvet.

The badge would indicate this chair was made from the mid 1960s to 1969.

Danish manufacturer ‘France & Son’ is best known today for being one of the most desirable and collectible mid century furniture brands, yet its multinational beginnings took shape during the 1930s.

By 1954, it was responsible for 60% of all Danish furniture exports.

After businessman Charles William Fearnley France (1897–1972) moved from his native England to Denmark in 1936, he began to operate a small mattress factory alongside his friend Eric Daverkosen, a Danish cabinetmaker, under the name ‘France & Daverkosen’.

A year later, Daverkosen passed away, and when Denmark was invaded during the Second World War, Charles France was captured and sent to a prison camp in Germany. When he was released, the British entrepreneur set out to produce furniture in the early 1950s, setting up a shop in Hillerød, Denmark to manufacture the kind of sleek beech and teak goods that were gaining widespread acclaim around the world.

In 1957, France’s son, James, joined the business, and the company changed its name to reflect the addition to ‘France & Son’.

Throughout the ’50s and ’60s they produced a stunning array of designs working with designers like Finn Juhl, Grete Valk, Ole Wanscher, Peter Hvidtand Orla Mølgaard-Nielsen all gracing its catalogues.

In the 1960s, the company was bought by Danish designer Poul Cadovius, who folded it into the operations at CADO, a company he founded during the 1950s.

Dimensions
Height - 76cm
Width - 65.5cm
Depth - 75cm
Seat Height - 42.5cm

Born in Copenhagen in 1903, Danish architect-designer Ole Wanscher was a key player in Denmark's midcentury modern movement. In the postwar era, the simple and refined aesthetic he achieved by reinventing classic forms helped define Scandinavian design, and many of his pieces became staples in Scandinavian homes.

Wanscher studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts under famous architect-designer Kaare Klint (1888-1954). Upon graduating, Wanscher worked with Klint from 1924 to 1927 and, after Klint passed away, Wanscher was given Klint's professorship at the academy - a position he held until he retired in 1973.

In 1927, Wanscher opened his own architecture firm, specializing in furniture design.

Between the 1940s and 1960s, Wanscher enjoyed fruitful collaborations with small-scale, artisanal cabinetmakers, like the masterful A. J. Iversen (1888-1979), as well as well as larger-scale Danish companies, such as France & Søn, Fritz Hansen, Poul Jeppesen, and Rud Rasmussen.

Wanscher went on to write various articles and publish several books on design history, such as The History of the Arts of Furniture (1956) and Five Thousand Years of Furniture (1967).

Wanscher passed away in 1985. Many of Wanscher's design remain in production with Carl Hansen & Søn.

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National and international delivery is available at an extra cost which we can organise on your behalf.

Collection in person is welcome. We are West of Cambridge in Bourn CB23.

Please message before purchasing to confirm delivery costs.

Please note that vintage furniture may have some slight imperfections, which is to be expected in keeping with its age, as we do not offer returns on items sold.