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pp19 Papa Bear Chair
Hans J. Wegner, 1951

Be embraced by the great bear paws of this all time comfortable easy chair. Consider it an investment for life as gifted Danish craftsmen spend a minimum of two weeks hand crafting each chair to the highest standards.

The Papa Bear Chair stands as the archetype for a comfortable easy chair. The strong solid wooden frame constitutes the foundation on which the comprehensive and detailed upholstery work is built.

Four natural materials constitute the comfortable upholstery, cotton, palm leaves, flax fibre, horsehair, and of course metal springs providing sensitive support for the back.

With this kind of genuine upholstery you will have a chair that will wear in rather than wear out. This chair will be softer and even more comfortable with use.

Initiating production of the frames in 1953, the Papa Bear Chair was the first Hans J. Wegner design to be produced at PP Møbler and marks the beginning of a life long passionate collaboration involving generations of craftsmen and countless hours of work in the workshop developing prototypes and production techniques for numerous Wegner models, yet the Papa Bear Chair remains the most exclusive piece of them all.


Dimensions W90 x D95 x H101 cm – Seat height 42 cm – Armrests height 65 cm

Wood oak, ash, cherry or walnut
Structure wood + coil springs in the backrest
Padding cotton, palm leaves, tow plant fiber, horse hair

Upholstery fabric or leather – piping and buttons in standard leather or same as the chair

PP19
from

PP120 Stool - Oak
from

PP120 Stool - Ash
from

Free samples (against deposit)

standard leathers

wood

soaped oak

white oiled oak

oiled oak

oiled cherry

soaped ash

white oiled ash

oiled walnut

Hans J. Wegner

Hans J. Wegner was born in 1914 in Tønder, Denmark, the son of a shoemaker. At the age of 17, he finished his apprenticeship as a cabinetmaker with H. F. Stahlberg, in whose workshops Wegner’s first design experiments took form. He moved to Copenhagen as a 20 year-old, and attended the School of Arts and Crafts from 1936 – 1938 before he began working as an architect.

As a young architect, Wegner joined Arne Jacobsen and Erik Møller in Århus, working on furniture design for the new Århus city hall in 1940. It was during the same year that Wegner began collaborating with master cabinetmaker, Johannes Hansen, who was a driving force in bringing new furniture design to the Danish public.

The Copenhagen Museum of Art and Industry acquired its first Wegner chair in 1942.

Wegner started his own design office in 1943. It was in 1944 that he designed the first “Chinese chair” in a series of new chairs that were inspired by portraits of Danish merchants sitting in Ming chairs. One of these chairs, the “Wishbone Chair”, designed in 1949 and produced by Carl Hansen & Son in Odense since 1950, became the most successful of all Wegner chairs.

Among Danish furniture designers, Hans J. Wegner is considered one of the most creative and productive. He has received practically every major recognition given to designers, including the Lunning prize, the grand prix of the Milan Triennale, Sweden’s Prince Eugen medal and the Danish Eckersberg medal. Wegner is an honorary Royal designer for industry of the Royal Society of Arts in London. Almost all of the world’s major design museums – from The Museum of Modern Art in New York to Die Neue Sammlung in Munich – include his furniture in their collections.

Hans J. Wegner died in Denmark in January, 2007.

Hans J. Wegner’s  contribution to Danish Modern:

- First a cabinetmaker, then a designer: integrates exacting joinery techniques and exquisite form.

- A deep respect for wood and its characteristics – and an abiding curiosity about other natural materials

- Brings an organic, natural softness to formalistic minimalism

- Generally regarded as ”the master of the chair”, with more than 400 chair designs to his name