INTERIOR AND FURNITURE DESIGNBy Mike RoemerInterior designer (MDD) and design editorFURNITURE DESIGNDanish furniture design has a tradition dating back almost 450 years. In 1554, a number of cabinetmakers founded Koebenhavns Snedkerlaug (The Copenhagen Guild of Cabinetmakers) with the dual purpose of creating high-quality furniture and of protecting the trade from poor craftsmen by establishing formal training for cabinetmakers. Two hundred years later, in 1777,Det Kongelige Meoble Magazine (The Royal Furniture Magazine) was established with the aim of manufacturing uniform, high-quality furniture in terms of production and design for the Danish Royal Household and its various departments and ministries etc. The furniture was designed alost along the lines of catalogue goods by the most renowned designers of the period, and their drawings were forwarded to master cabinetmakers all over the country, who then manufactured them.After a brief period of only 40 years, the practice came to an end in 1815.The important thing however, is that the above-mentioned events were extremely visionary as regards quality and design, and that they went on to form a solid foundation for later development.Furthermore,Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi (The Royal Danish Academy of Art) in Copenhagen, established a school of furniture design in 1770,whose purpose was the education of furniture apprentices to draw and inspect masterpieces what amounted to the worlds first systematic education of furniture designer. Throughout the 19th century, indeed until the beginning of the 1920s, there is an absence of an independent Danish style. The architects of the time are inspired by French, and particularly, English furniture and only design furniture for the wealthy upper classes and civil authorities. Peasants, farmers and the fledgling working class still do not represent an interesting commercial body, but this picture changes with the countrys move from an agricultural society to an industrialized one towards the end of the last century. The cities almost exploded in size and social awareness frew with the emergence of town new social classes-laborers and office workers-both of whom demanded monetary payment for their services. Put in simple terms, you might say that this was how the foundation of modern consumer society came into being. Once current overheads had been met such as food,clothing,rent and heating etc. People still had the means to buy furniture, which in its own small way, created the basis for a formalized furniture industry.The furniture industry did not really take off until people began moving away from the cramped apartments in the city centers to larger apartments and detached houses on the outskirts of town. This happened in two stages, the first of which was in the 1920s,when the social housing projects began and detached houses started to appear. The second stage was in the 1950s,when both types of housing began to shoot up everywhere. This development, combined with a high level of knowledge and awareness,creatd a new and more rational housing culture where people began to demand high-quality functional furniture. As it turned out, people outside Denmark soon began to make the same kinds of demands.The 1920s saw the desire for a purely Danish style of furniture. In 1924,a lectureship in furniture design was established at Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole (The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture) in Copenhagen. The lectureship went to the Danish architect,Kaare Klimt(1888-1954), who influenced the development of Danish furniture design to a great degree.Kaare Klint was a systematic and a modernist who used his students to pioneer a series of surveys and analyses of furniture and spatial needs. First and foremost,Kaare Klint represented the approach that furniture should be functional and user-friendly, an approach which in many ways deviated from the rest of Europe, where functionalism often took the form of formalistic exercises, directing its focus towards a well-to-do elite rather than the ordinary man in the street.The result was that a strong,independent,humanistic functionalism evolved in Denmark through the 1930s and 40s,culminating in an international breakthrough at the beginning of the 1950s.A contributory factor to this breakthrough was the Guild of Cabinetmakers annual autumn exhibition held for the first time in 1928.Here, young furniture designers could find collaborative partners among the established cabinetmaker workshops with an eye to developing new types of furniture. It was at these exhibitions that Danish architects like Hans J.Wegner,Ole Wanscher, Finn Juhl,Boerge Mogensen,Arne Jacobsen and many others made their breakthrough, and it was at these same exhibitions in the period following the Second World War that, in particular the American market, caught sight of Danish furniture design-Danish modern.The development of Danish furniture desi