TRACING THE SOUL OF WOOD
Carl Hansen & Son aims to train more carpenters – for the benefit of the company itself as well as for Denmark’s craftsmanship tradition. We spoke with Knud Erik Hansen about his company, where everything is about taming the wood.
Imagine the scene. Five-year-old Knud Erik standing at a specially-made workbench placed next to the factory’s most skilled carpenter, Jespersen, so the little boy can learn the craft from the master himself.
“I was never bored as a child. I wasn’t allowed to be around the machines, and back then you listened to your father, but I soaked up all the impressions that the journeymen’s skills and conversations gave me,” Knud Erik Hansen remembers, 64 years later. He’s in voluntary 14-day quarantine after travelling to Thailand, so our conversation is taking place over the phone, which means that he must describe the space he is sitting in, built from old pine logs dating back to the 1600s and with a view to one of Denmark’s largest chestnut trees. Wood is at the centre of Carl Hansen & Son, an ever-expanding company with no fewer than nine flagship stores around the world, from Osaka and Tokyo to New York and San Francisco. Immersed in the family business, Knud Erik Hansen – as mentioned – developed a natural affinity for wood and carpentry, but has never received any formal carpenter training. An interest in economics and trade led him to a 26-year career in the shipping industry, and this global outlook served him well when, 27 years ago, his mother appointed him managing director of the company that over the years has supplied the world market with design classics, including millions of Hans J. Wegner’s CH24 Wishbone chairs.
“I’m the first person without carpentry training to head Carl Hansen & Son, but I’ve always known that craftsmanship is the very foundation of this company. Therefore we have also recently established an apprenticeship workshop, where over 20 apprentices undergo the more than three years of training required to become a qualified carpenter. The help is mutual, because we need trained carpenters. Apprentices must be capable of making the joints used in production, on machines as well as by hand. This is how they gain a thorough understanding of the joint and its inherent challenges. The apprentices also learn to make different pieces for internal use, to restore older pieces and to create bespoke furniture, so we are training and turning out versatile, all-round carpenters. In other words, a modern master apprenticeship. In our production, the machines handle the heavier work, thus enabling the carpenters to concentrate on the details and ensure that the wood has soul. You won’t become the new Hans J. Wegner if you’re not a carpenter and if you don’t know your craft,” says Knud Erik Hansen, who over the years has followed Denmark’s top furniture designers and admired such greats as Ole Wanscher, whose joints are unparalleled. He never became as renowned as designers like Wegner, Mogensen and Jacobsen, because in his time he never found the right commercial partner. But no one could make a chair joint like he could. Wegner’s art was to always go right to the edge, within just those millimetres that determined whether a piece of furniture ‘lived’ or not.
“Oak is by far the species of wood we use most. It’s a difficult species in many ways – a temperamental and relatively hysterical species with lots of knots,” laughs Knud Erik Hansen.
“In my opinion, the human aspect of a piece of furniture is very important. Where you can see that a human being lies behind its creation. I’m reminded of a nice story where one of our carpenters, Ejvind, once received a silver medal for his final test piece, which was an incredibly beautiful and well-made commode. He couldn’t afford to buy the piece, so my mother did, but she told Ejvind that he could always buy it back at the price she had paid, but that he should also bring her another commode, perhaps not so exquisite in its details, but a replacement nonetheless. So 25 years passed, and my mother moved to Kerteminde, and one day the doorbell rang. There was Ejvind, who introduced himself. My mother went over to the commode, opened a drawer and found a piece of paper with the price of the piece. Ejvind paid the original amount, which in current terms was very small, and, hey, what about the commode that was supposed to replace the test piece? It was outside in Ejvind’s car, and after the trade, the graduation piece ended back up with the man who had made it,” says Knud Erik Hansen. The hope is to train carpenters just as skilled as Ejvind.