The Spoke-back Sofa

Børge Mogensen and Hans J. Wegner, both born in 1914, were both colleagues and friends, and the two Danish designers worked together on a number of exhibition projects. One of them was the annual Copenhagen Cabinetmaker’s Guild Exhibition in 1945, where Mogensen and Wegner designed and presented “A Home For the Future”.

The centrepiece of Mogensen and Wegner’s stand was the living room, in which they presented a new vision for lightweight and functional furniture. Even though the Spoke-back series was acclaimed for its innovation, it was also regarded as too sophisticated for the modest post-war culture, and the Spoke-back sofa did not go into production until 1963. In 1974 Wegner redesigned the 1788 easy chair to arrive at the current design.

The Spoke-back Sofa materialises Mogensen’s idea of a sofa with a reclining side and it was originally exhibited without back cushions. Hans J. Wegner’s spoke-back chair provides a comfortable seat with beautiful profiling in the armrests that reveals Wegner’s sculptural talents.

Both designs are completely bare from every angle – even the cushions are attached with visible straps. The exposed wooden construction is typical for both Mogensen and Wegner, and in the Spoke-back Collection they continued their work with the Windsor chair methodology.