Full Description
Growing up, almost every kid dreams of finding buried treasure. That dream slowly fades with age as they realise that Blackbeard never visited their backyard. For some, the search for treasure continues in their adult lives in other ways. Metal detectors and shovels may be replaced with online searches and library visits, but the thrill of the hunt is still alive, ever driving the quest forward.
Lost Danish Treasure tells the tale of two stories: 1) the history of Finn Juhl's iconic Chieftain Chair and a long-forgotten painting that preceded it, and 2) the individual connections to this design by a small group of collector researchers. Although starting in different eras and timelines, the two accounts start to intertwine over the course of the book, with the research efforts of today helping to unravel the mysteries of the past. As each chapter unfolds, more and more clues are revealed that slowly weave the storylines closer together— until the summer of 2021, when both accounts collided after Lot 242 popped up in an auction house in Chicago. The result of the subsequent analysis sheds new light about the origins and identity of the very first Chieftain Chair.
Contents
1 Prologue 7
2 Finn Juhn - The Early Years 11
3 Kaare Klint and the Big Three 15
4 Design Addict 25
5 Bearing-vs-Borne 31
6 The 1949 Copenhagen
Cabinetmakers' Guild Exhibition 47
7 The 1949 Finn Juhl / Niels Vodder Booth 55
8 A Really Nice Chair 71
9 The Chieftain Chair 73
10 Finn Juhl for Baker Modern 101
11 75 Years of Chieftain Production 113
12 The Breuer Chieftain 145
13 Designmuseum Denmark 159
14 The Watercolors of Finn Juhl 167
15 The Art Institute of Chicago 207
16 The Newman Chieftain 217
17 Fingerprints on Furniture 229
18 The Elusive 1950s Baker Chieftain 243
19 Chicago's Queen of Arts 255
20 Lot 242 259
21 Who Else Was Looking? 277
22 Boooooooooom!!!!!!!! 283
23 Filling in the Blanks 289
24 The Very First Chieftain Chair 297
25 An Unexpected Theory 307
26 Next Steps 311
27 Afterword 317
Acknowledgments 323
Bibliography 329
End Notes 331
Index 339
The Author 351
