In 1956, the Danish furniture designer Hans J. Wegner drew an apparently simple chair with a backrest curving to provide elbow support and a rounded seat that appears to float above the legs. Creating a prototype of the “Elbow Chair” proved to be so difficult, however, that it never went into production. 

“It’s incredibly complicated,” says Knud Erik Hansen, the CEO of furniture company Carl Hansen & Søn. The structure that supports the seat alone is built from nine layers of veneer, pressed in a single operation with a special mold; the back is a large, steam-bent piece of wood that must then be precisely milled. In the 1950s, when the chair would have been built entirely by hand, the process would have taken weeks. Every manufacturer Wegner approached declined.

Half a century later, Hansen encountered the prototype in Wegner’s studio and was determined to find a way to finally put it into production. At the factory, his craftsmen balked at the idea but Hansen looked to cutting-edge CNC capabilities, investing in a machine that could mill multiple backrests at once. What had once been “a terrible job” was now suddenly possible. 

To suit taller bodies and modern table heights, the reissued Elbow Chair was raised by almost an inch, a change that Wegner’s design studio had to give permission for. “We can’t do anything at all to the design unless it’s approved,” Hansen says. It’s a requirement that ensures manufacturers respect the original intentions of the designer and, for Carl Hansen, this is often central to choosing what the company reissues—a selection process that is part curatorial and part commercial.