Artist Dossier: Poul Kjaerholm

Poul Kjaerholm’s furniture conveys the tension between modernity and age-old craft with breathtaking immediacy. The contradiction inherent in combining supple hand-rubbed leather with tough aircraft-industry screws is the subtext to the refined Wow! of the PK-22’s curved leg, as deliberate as a brushstroke, and the visual panache of the PK-24 chaise’s arched rattan cradled in square steel arms. But ultimately the connoisseur appeal of a Kjaerholm work resides in its structural purity, sheared clean of any concern so ephemeral as style.

The astonishingly sophisticated PK-22, created in 1956, was the Danish designer’s breakthrough piece, making him instantly famous. It won the Grand Prix at the Milan Triennale in 1957 and has remained in production ever since. In December 2007, Christie’s London sold a pair of PK-22 chairs with rattan seats made by the original manufacturer, E. Kold Christensen, for $15,206.

Kjaerholm treated machine-made steel with the same respect he accorded the finest hand-tooled material. He saw no need to reinvent traditional furniture shapes yet created pieces of striking originality. Looking at one of his chairs, “it is impossible to tell if it is 50 or 5 years old,” says Michael Sheridan, an architect and the author of the recently published The Furniture of Poul Kjaerholm: Catalogue Raisonné (Gregory R. Miller & Company).

Although his years of active production were relatively brief, from 1955 until his death in 1980, Kjaerholm (pronounced KIR-holm) has always attracted a following, chiefly among connoisseurs of perfectly conceived expressions of functional form. Today the near-obsessive refinement of Kjaerholm’s leather and steel armchairs, stone-topped tables and other minimalist stunners has made them especially appealing to fine-art collectors casting an eye toward design. Their interest is reflected in soaring prices that nevertheless seem modest considering the shrinking availability of the work.

At Art Basel in June, R 20th Century, of New York, received a rumored $200,000 to $250,000 for a rare square daybed upholstered in welted beige leather and originally designed for a town hall in Denmark. The gallery’s Zesty Meyers did not confirm the amount, saying only that it was a record high price for the furniture maker.

Born in 1907 in northern Jutland, Poul Kjaerholm wanted to be a painter, but his father insisted that he learn a more practical trade. He apprenticed with a master craftsman, Thorvald Grønbech, and in 1948 enrolled in the School of Arts and Crafts, in Copenhagen, where he studied under Hans Wegner, a key player in the Danish Modern movement, and Jørn Utzon, the industrial designer. Kjaerholm’s idols were the Dutch designer and architect Gerrit Rietveld, the modern master builder Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and the American designer Charles Eames. Like many young designers, he wanted to make furniture that would be mass-produced and affordable

But Kjaerholm was too much of a perfectionist to stay that course. In 1955, when Christensen, a distinguished cabinetmaker in Copenhagen, was looking for a designer to help his company break away from producing only cabinetry, Wegner recommended his best student, Kjaerholm. Thus was launched a career-making partnership. Over the next 25 years, Kjaerholm created about one piece a year for Christensen. These were manufactured in quantities ranging from a handful to a few thousand. Once he had embarked on his career as a furniture maker, Kjaerholm’s relationship with Christensen was exclusive, although other companies produced his furniture after his death, including Kjaerholm Productions, established by his son in 2004.

An elaborate system was developed to identify his products. Each furniture type was associated with a series of 10 numbers, and each piece of that type bore one of those numbers preceded by the initials PK. Thus PK 0 through 9 denote small chairs with no armrests; PK 10 through 19, small chairs with armrests; and so on.

Although the very early pieces were not marked, an omission that can be confusing to collectors, most of Kjaerholm’s pieces manufactured by Christensen bear the distinctive double-K stamp designed by the artist. With or without a mark, the supple patina of the leather and unpolished luster of the steel indicate clearly enough that a piece was made by Christensen under Kjaerholm’s supervision.