The Chieftain And The Chair Av Maggie Taft

A history of how Danish design rose to prominence in the postwar United States, becoming shorthand for stylish modern comfort. Today, Danish Modern design is synonymous with clean, midcentury cool. During the 1950s and `60s, it flourished as the furniture choice for Americans who hoped to signal they were current and chic. But how did this happen? How did Danish Modern become the design movement of the times? In The Chieftain and the Chair, Maggie Taft tells the tale of our love affair with Danish Modern design. Structured as a biography of two iconic chairs¿Finn Juhl¿s Chieftain Chair and Hans Wegner¿s Round Chair, both designed and first fabricated in 1949¿this book follows the chairs from conception and fabrication through marketing, distribution, and use. Drawing on research in public and private archives, Taft considers how political, economic, and cultural forces in interwar Denmark laid the foundations for the postwar furniture industry, and she tracks the deliberate maneuvering