Introducing the PK15 Chair: a masterpiece of woodworking craftsmanship - originally designed in 1979 by Poul Kjærholm, the PK15 was the last chair created by the revered Danish architect and furniture designer.
The chair represents a departure from his primary material steel, combining two natural elements, steam-bent ash, and wicker, with which Kjærholm had a long fascination.
The PK15 is a tour de force, a highly complex piece of woodworking craftsmanship that results in a radically simple expression of two traditional materials. The result of an exhaustive development process that pushes steam bending to the limits, the chair is both linear and curved with one piece of solid wood forming the backrest and then turning at right angles to become the straight front legs. Another single piece of wood forms the inner arch of the backrest and back legs. The seat expresses the geometry of the structure, elliptical but opening wide to the front. The French webbing of the wicker adds a regular linear element and its open weave creates a lightness through transparency that is a central tenet of many of Kjærholm’s designs.
Poul Kjaerholm was born in 1929 in Øster Vrå, Denmark. He finished his apprenticeship as a cabinet maker with Grønbech in 1948 and graduated at the School of Arts and Crafts in Copenhagen in 1952 with a.o. the PK 25 chair that is still produced by Fritz Hansen.
Poul Kjaerholm was very articulate and with natural authority he started an outstanding career as an educator in the same year (1952) but continued to study with Prof. Erik Herløw and Prof. Palle Suenson.
From 1955, the year he did the famous PK 22, for which he received the Lunning Award in 1958, he became assistant at the Royal Danish Academy of Arts in Copenhagen and lecturer in 1959. He became head of the Institute for Design in 1973 and finally professor in 1976 until his premature dead in 1980. Over all these years he designed dozens of chairs, long chairs, and tables that became landmarks for Danish furniture design, including the famous PK 24 long chair. Most of his furniture was initially and until 1982 produced by his friend E. Kold Christensen in Hellerup.
A wide selection of that production has been part of the Fritz Hansen collection since.
Inspiration
