Model presented at The Copenhagen Cabinetmakers' Guild Exhibition at Designmuseum Danmark, 1963.

Literature: Grete Jalk [ed.]: “40 Years of Danish Furniture Design”, vol. 4, p. 242–243.

Provenance: Acquired at Bruun Rasmussen auction 858 lot no. 1004 in 2015. Before then at Bruun Rasmussen auction 684 lot no. 674 in 2000. The previous owner who sold the present piece at the latter auction bought it at the Copenhagen Cabinetmakers' Guild Exhibition in 1963.

Grete Jalk was one of the very few female architects and designers who during the golden age of Danish design from around 1940–1970 managed to achieve a breakthrough in a world dominated by male colleagues, and she made it all the way to the front of the pack. Grete Jalk broke with the norms and trained as a carpenter before she completed her studies at the furniture department at the School of Arts and Crafts in 1946. In her first furniture pieces from the late 1940s, she adhered to the traditions of classical Danish craftsmanship and created furniture with the forms known at the time. However, during the 1950s, she displayed a special talent for embracing wider traditions than what the classical Danish craftsmanship usually dictated. She did this by both orienting herself towards international trends and exploring the possibilities that new materials and production methods, such as lamination and the bending of forms, made possible. Her zenith as a furniture designer was around the period 1960–64, where she, among other pieces, designed her iconic shell chair from 1963, which stands as one of the clearest examples from anywhere in the world of modern furniture design in the 20th century. This chair and stool are from this same fruitful period and the set was exhibited at the Cabinetmakers’ Guild Exhibition in 1963.

It is in many ways a modern anachronism, a kind of juxtaposition, which adheres to a rational geometric, industrial modernism in its idiom with an apparent simplicity, and the choice of the unpretentious Oregon pine as material. But in reality, the refined and extremely expensive carpentry was reserved for the few, and this approach to the craft slowly succumbed to more rational productions in the following decade. The chair was presented in 1963 in a nearly whitewashed ‘religious’ room in front of the modern-day altar of a stereo and TV. A decor which is an exquisite aesthetic pleasure, but where the chair also almost becomes an ironic commentary on its own sublimeness. Grete Jalk continued to work for many years until her death in 2006. In 1987, she was the editor of the 4-volume work “40 Years of Danish Furniture Design”, thereby helping to preserve essential knowledge about the golden age of Danish design. It is a book that today stands as the central reference source for Danish furniture design.