Oksen Lounge Chair

Fritz Hansen – Arne Jacobsen 1966

Unlike many of Arne Jacobsen's other designs, Oksen Chair was not designed for a specific architectural project. The voluminous Oksen represents edge and personality and like its predecessor – the Egg – it inhabits a room like no one else. It took Arne Jacobsen nothing less than five years to develop the Oksen design.

In contrast to many of his earlier pieces that are characterised by rounded, organic shapes, this easy chair has a much sharper outline. Arne Jacobsen always wanted to surprise the public and Oksen was a project he repeatedly returned to with many variations in the years 1962-66 before it finally took shape in 1966.

Indeed it can be defined as the largest and most distinctive chair that Arne Jacobsen ever designed. The inspiration is clearly the American recliner type that Jacobsen had seen in the United States.

Upholstery Oksen comes in leather only and in three different leather types: the beautiful Elegance leather and the strong Classic leather in black or Walnut and finally in Extreme leather in black only. Whilst the chair looks graphical and almost facetted shaped when you look at it from the side and from the back, the actual seating part is softened by a foam and down seat and foam layered neck. The seat will soften in time as the chair slowly ages with beauty. Furthermore, the back of Oksen is handstitched just like the Egg while the front side is sowed.

Base The base of the chair is the original and recognisable Arne Jacobsen 5-star base, and the base of the matching footstool is the 4-star base. Furthermore the columns of the chair is also available with return mechanism. The base is available in two versions: black powder coated aluminium and satin polished aluminium.

Arne Jacobsen is born on February 11, 1902 in Copenhagen. His father, Johan Jacobsen, is a wholesale trader in safety pins and snap fasteners. His mother, Pouline Jacobsen, a bank clerk, paints floral motifs in her spare time. The family lived in a typical Victorian style home. As a contrast to his parents’ overly decorated taste, Arne paints his room in white.

Background & school relations

He met the Lassen brothers at Nærum Boarding School: later, Flemming Lassen was to become his partner in a series of architectural projects. Arne Jacobsen is a restless pupil, always up to pranks, with a self-deprecating humour. Already as a child, he showed an extraordinary talent for drawing and depicting nature through scrupulous studies. He wants to be painter, but his father felt that architect was a more sensible choice.

The Pleasant and the necessary trips abroad

Jacobsen’s travelling begin already in his twenties, when he went to sea to New York. Then followed an apprenticeship as a bricklayer in Germany and a series of study and drawing excursions to Italy. Jacobsen produced some of his finest watercolours during this period, capturing atmospheres and shapes accurately and carefully. From the beginning of his career, Jacobsen turned his gaze abroad, without abandoning Danish traditions.

Arne Jacobsen behind the design

Jacobsen production reflects his personality: an insistent, perfectionist modernist, to whom no detail was trivial, although the main picture was basically black/white and unambiguous. On the other hand, the nature-loving botanist and jovial family man: like him, his work is precise and warm, Danish and universal, modern and timeless.