Too Many Chairs to Cherish

The Danish Design Museum (Designmuseum Danmark) itself is a square—four wings packed with treasures with a courtyard tucked in the middle. Each of the wings is a self-contained, themed exhibition space. At the time of my visit, one wing was dedicated to the work of Kaare Klint, one to the history of objects designed for children, one to fashion, and one to the museum’s permanent collection. The permanent collection guides the viewer through the history of Danish design, ‘neath archways entitled “Utopia” and “Historicism” and “Arne Jacobsen.” Running along the left hand side of this progression through history is an unending procession of chairs.

A portion of the chair procession, elevated on a glowing platform.

Of Chairs and Pedestals

We've had our share of chairs now...We've had our share of furniture.

– Jacob Fruensgaard Oe

How many chairs should the Danish Design Museum have? Like the philosopher Alex Hay once said, How long is a piece of string? It’s a nonsensical question. In fact, it is not really a question about chairs at all, but about what the chairs represent: design that I couldn’t interact with. Chairs are designed for sitting in, but at the design museum, no sitting is allowed. The chairs are raised on pedestals, glowing from beneath or lit softly from above. They loveliest are staged behind rope, bathed in a halo of warm light. They truly are lovely. But is this really the way to experience some of the world’s best chairs? Maybe not.

The Holy Trinity of chairs designed for the SAS Hotel: the drop, the egg, the swan.

I love chairs as much (more) than the next guy. But chairs do not belong in shrines. And after a while, accompanying this parade of untouchable chairs morphed from a pleasant, to an itchy, to an oppressive task. I was being asked to evaluate design objects in a way that didn’t make sense—sans interaction, across great distances, mediated by text. And the chairs, lined up like horses to battle, represented that phenomenon in its most distilled form. The museum didn’t create opportunities to interact with great design. Instead, dressers were mounted on walls, toys were placed behind glass, and chairs were raised on platforms. Throughout the museum, design was curated like an art—mounted, placed, and raised.

Another several million chairs.

Design is art, of course—art that’s meant to be used. In order to even understand a design, let alone evaluate it, you have to use it. It has to function. Function is as integral to design as are aesthetics. These are not groundbreaking insights. I mention them only by way of explaining my experience at the museum, and this restlessness that transpired. Being kept from interacting with the design on display made me feel corralled. By the time I got to at the end of my visit, I was so antsy that I circumnavigated the gift shop, handling every object on display (sometimes twice if the object had, say, silicon components).

Redemption through Text

To be fair, there were many incredible pieces in the museum, and I’m wholly glad that I went. The temporary exhibit on designs for childhood actually did provide a few touchable artifacts and, for children, there were massive rubber building blocks with which to construct your own lounging opportunities. I got to see a real live Finnish Baby Box—a box that the Finnish government sends to expecting mothers that also doubles as a crib once the other treasures are removed: “The Finnish Baby Box is a starter kit to parenthood containing body suits, sleeping bag, outdoor gear and much more - and the little one can sleep in it too!”

The Finnish Baby Box

The Finnish Baby Box captured the imagination of my family—chronically obsessed with both babies and socialist initiatives—several years back and we collectively can’t stop talking about it, so to see it in person—albeit behind glass—was on par with meeting a Backstreet Boy. That alone would have been worth it. But it wasn’t alone; the exhibit also featured a fuzzy Icelandic seal suit made for keeping small children both warm and adorable. I’m still thinking about that seal suit many days later. The exhibit on Kaare Klint was also quite novel, and the text describing that accompanied the exhibit provided lots of vivid snapshots into of his process.

A fuzzy seal jumper for Icelandic youths, even more precious in person.

The text throughout the museum was presented in heavy, unbroken blocks. The length of these, amplified by the English and Danish translations presented side-by-side, sometimes reached comical proportions. But for those willing to wade through, the text was chalk full of insights from the designers themselves. “It's more comfortable to sit on a color you like,” said Verner Panton, the designer of the famous stacking chair, which was the first mass-produced chair in the world. I learned that Danish architect Poul Henningsen, the designer of the PH artichoke lamp preferred, "the new, however poor, to the old, however good." Kaare Klint, I learned, was perpetually bankrupt because of lawsuits that ensued when Klint took longer than expected to adequately complete tasks. In 1927, at the height of his career, he wrote, “I’m a terrible human being but, what’s worse, I am also terribly poor.”

Considering an Alternative

I had a dissonant experience at the design museum. But that didn’t mean that I left with a discernable alternative in mind, or a crystal-clear picture of what a successful homage to Danish design would look like. It should be interactive; that much I knew. What’s more, it would have to be truly monumental. The legacy of Danish design is so illustrious that to approach a comprehensive picture would require ambitious breadth. Ideally, it would also be an aspirational space—one that prompted viewers to improve their lives through design in the way that Klint and Jacobsen and Wegner did. In short, such a space seemed hardly possible. But a few hours later, I stumbled upon it.

The storefront at Illums Bolighus

Illums Bolighus is part of the chain of “Royal shopping stores” located in the busy Amager Torv Square—a stone’s throw from our digs in central Copenhagen. Based on its window display, you might think that Illums Bolighus is a department store of the Harrods or Saks ilk. And though there are departments and it’s clearly a store, the moniker doesn’t fit. Illums Bolighus is more like a temple. It’s a pilgrimage site—a gathering place for enthusiasts of Danish modern design.

Like the Design Museum, Illums Bolighus is split into four large sections, each with their own internal structure. Each section is dedicated to one of four themes—furniture, lighting, fashion, and (for lack of an umbrella term) products. The product floor is full of things with wonderfully obscure-yet-utilitarian purposes—things you don’t know you need until you pick them up, hold them in your hands, and notice light get just little dimmer when you put them down again. To illustrate, here are a few examples of items that left me spellbound:

1. Barbie-scale fixie bicycles that are also pizza cutters.
2. Lid Sid, a tiny rubber man that lies between your pot and your pot lid, allowing steam to escape. 
3. The thirty-three colors of kitchen aid mixers on display.
4. Bare light bulbs with swan wings.
5. A silicon goldfish that separates eggs with its mouth.

A fixie for cutting pizza, two great things that go great together.

Lid Sid, just one of my many silicon crushes.

The displays are impeccable—museum worthy in size and scope, but uninhibited by protective constraints or the stale air of history. Nothing is behind glass, save for a few jewelry items and one wooden monkeys that cost 14,000 Danish Kroner.

I visited Illums Bolighus store four times during our ten days in Copenhagen and I always left feeling like my life was very drab indeed. But I also left, every time, inspired to make my life more colorful, more clever, and more delightful. And I left full of ideas for how to make those things happen. At Illums Bolighus, I was able to experience the best in Danish design—I touched the materials, I felt the craftmanship, sat on the chairs, hugged the pillows, and tried on the clothes. I never bought anything, but I learned more about Danish design from the time I spent there than I did in the Design Museum.

Inside Illums Bolighus

Of course, there are things that a museum can do that a store can’t. The Design Museum’s feature length focus on Kaare Klint, would never find purchase in Illums Bolighus. Nor, would long, dense texts occasionally studded with nuggets of insight from designers fifty years dead. In the general case, I would always choose a museum over a store if my goal was to learn about a subject in-depth. But in the case of design, I felt that Illums Bolighus was positioned to expose me to new concepts in Danish design and to facilitate my understanding. Something about a store where all the items were too expensive to buy but perfectly poised to cherish and arranged for optimal caressing just worked for me. It may be capitalist blasphemy, but there it is.

A goldfish egg separator, which everyone in my family is getting for Christmas.