Queen Chair

EJ101 Elegance
Queen Chair

EJ101

In 1960, Wegner designed a feminine counterpart to the Oxchair, the Queen chair, which went into production in 2010.

The Queen Chair (EJ101) is a rare piece of furniture from Wegner’s hand in that the wood and his sublime cabinetmaking craftsmanship are hidden from view.

RefHans J. Wegner. A Nordic Design Icon from Tønder. Edited by Anne Blond.

On the other hand the chair bears witness to another of his talents, namely his sense of sculptural form. This was a facility he began cultivating as a boy in Tønder, where he loved woodcarving and made a number of statuettes out of scrap wood from construction sites.

As opposed to the functional form that is always tied to carrying out a specific assignment, the sculptural form in principle is free of such constrictions and can therefore play with the reactions and associations of the viewer, as well as its physical presence in a space. EJ100 certainly achieves this.

Wegner designed it together with the Ox Chair in

1960 for AP Stolen, the manufacturer who produced his upholstered chairs. As a easy chair, it takes up a lot of room. In this way it continues in the tradition of Wegner’s three-part shell chair from 1949 and especially the Flag Halyard Chair, which he also chose to fashion in a half-sitting/half-reclining position. Like the Flag Halyard Chair, EJ101 is equipped with an underframe of chrome-plated steel, but unlike the Flag Halyard’s visually light and airy upper part, EJ101’s upper section is heavy and less imposing than that of the Ox Chair, making it less masculine and a more feminine piece of furniture.

The chair’s main body is comprised of a seat, armrests and back moulded in cold cured foam and like the EJ 100 the Queen is still a large chair. Its size and soft, round forms – reminiscent of the work of English sculptor Henry Moore – invite one to curl up in its embrace, safe and secure.  This was something Wegner always took into consideration, since he felt it important to be able to sit in different positions in order to keep the body from becoming stiff.