On Tuesday, Prince Joachim and Princess Marie handed out the Wegner Prize in Tønder Town Hall.
The first time the Prize was awarded was in 2015 and it goes to a designer or an institution that has contributed to the memory of Hans Wegner or to the development of Nordic design.
Hans Wegner was a world-renowned Danish designer who specialized in furnitures. His high quality work was often described as “organic functionality”. He studied at the Danish Design School and in 1938 he was employed to design the furniture of the City Hall in Aarhus.
One example of his later work is a special furniture called the hoop chair which was originally designed in 1965 with a steel tube base. In 1985 it was put into production made entirely out of wood.
He received multiple prizes and was made honorary royal designer for industry by the Royal Society of Arts in London. His furniture is now found in many international buildings including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Die Neue Sammlung in Munich.
The Wegner Prize was founded in 2015 to mark the centenary of Hans Wegner’s birth. This is the 5th time it has been awarded and the Art Museum in Tønder and Tønder Municipality are the ones who created it.
This year the Wegner award went to A. Petersen Collection & Craft, a house of handicraft and design in central Copenhagen. They cultivate traditional tecniques in new design but also preserve modern technologies.
Those who would like to find out for themselves why the work of Hans Wegner is so special, can do so in the water tower next to the Tønder Museum. There, some of the works of Hans Wegner are on display and you can try his chairs and feel for yourself why they are known all around the world.
