User:Mads.gyldenkaerne/sandbox

Mogens Andersen
Mogens Andersen (30 December 1928 – 1989) studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts graduating as an architect specialised in furniture design in 1964. During his studies Mogens Andersen was particularly influenced by world renowned Danish furniture designers Ole Wanscher, and later Poul Kjærholm who both served as his professors. After completing his studies Mogens Andersen, worked as a furniture designer for Jens Risom in New York, a Danish-American furniture designer who played a key role in introducing Danish furniture design in the United States during the 1960’s.

Following this Mogens Andersen travelled the entire world working and living for extended periods in Greenland, Venezuela, Western Samoa, Kenya and Tanazania. In Western Samoa, for example, he was stationed by the United Nations with the objective of designing a line of furniture and setting up a production based on local resources available on the pacific island. This production remains active today. Mogens Andersen’s furniture design reflects his broad international outlook. However, it also reflects his focus on a democratic ethos – namely the idea that beautiful and functional everyday objects should not only be affordable to the wealthy, but to all. Like other key Danish furniture architects of his time he was influenced by the emergence of the Scandinavian model of social democracy in the 50’s and the increased availability of new low cost materials and methods for industrial mass-production.

Consequently Mogens Andersen had an investigative approach to developing furniture design with a form and function that took advantage of new materials, construction methods and how they could leveraged in an industrial scale production set-up.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Mogens Andersen, produced many original furniture designs. In 1956, for example, he produced the simple and stylish moulded A chair as a contribution to the Cabinetmakers’ Guild Exhibition where it won first prize and later was purchased by the Danish Arts Foundation. The elegant chair had removable turned solid-wood legs and the seats were stackable making it easy to pack and transport– an aspect the designer found essential.

The A chair along with a related table was later put into production by the Danish furniture manufacturing company Johannes Hansen Møbelsnedkeri (now PP Møbler), a world renowned Danish family owned joinery workshop with a strong tradition for crafting design furniture of high quality. Today the A chair and table is marketed as the ‘The Andersen Collection’ and is part of Stellarworks - a global design brand launched in 2010 with a portfolio of novel furniture collections inspired by craftsmanship and style traditions from around the world.