House of Finn Juhl - Onecollection A/S - furniture nerds!

Nyhavn Table and Sideboard Unit

Ivan Hansen and Henrik Sørensen  founded Onecollection A/S in 1990 with the simple purpose to find talented and cosy architects to design furniture and a network of competent subcontractors to produce it. 

The company built up a design furniture collection cooperating, between the others, with designer Erla Solveig Oskarsdottir, architects Søren Holst and Henrik Tengler.

In 1998, a big opportunity came! Finn Juhl’s widow, Hanne Wilhelm Hansen asked Onecollection A/S if they could help her make one of Finn Juhl’s sofas – Model 57.

Hanne Wilhelm Hansen wanted to have a single unit of the sofa produced for an exhibition that she wanted to arrange in honour of Finn Juhl, one of the most important pioneers in Danish design history. 

This was a fantastic challenge and the beginning of a new chapter in Onecollection’s history.

"The 57 sofa was a fantastic piece of furniture with design and craftsmanship qualities that we had not worked with before. We studied Finn Juhl’s materials and archives in detail and asked Hanne for permission to re-launch the Poeten sofa and the Pelikan chair. And we got it. We got free access to Finn Juhl’s house where Hanne lived and consulted Mr. Oda’s furniture collection in Japan. Thanks to the help of skilful craftsmen, we recreated these two models. It was a gamble on our side. Finn Juhl’s furniture had not been exhibited for many years and had, by and large, been forgotten outside the art and design history circles."

The next step was to take over all of the rights to Finn Juhl’s furniture. "We were simply not thinking rationally of the consequences – and thank God for that. Finn Juhl’s furniture consists of masterpieces which are expensive to develop, manufacture and, in particular, to hold in stock – and the sales were small...

In reality, our models were manufactured exactly like the furniture in Finn Juhl’s own house. The only difference was today’s possibilities to use high-technology CNC machines which, together with our craftsmanship, provided unique opportunities for the furniture’s organic mode of expression and the delicate seams that were supposed to withstand everyday use."

Actually, the collection contains more than 20 models and it is sold all over the world. His 100th anniversary was celebrated in 2012 with a number of special exhibitions in Denmark and abroad – a real fairy tale!

FJ Panel System

"On 1 December 1990, we started operations with two old tables and a couple of Børge Mogensen chairs in my mother’s laundry room in Odense... We bought an old, second-hand Renault Traffic delivery van for 18,200 Danish kroner. The sign printed in big letters on the side of the van said “Lucas batterier”... We loaded a chair, a table, a sofa and a couple of tea light candlesticks drawn by Søren Holst into the van and threw ourselves into a staggering adventure. A lot could have happened differently but it could have hardly been more fun. We created our own lifestyle which simply did not include premeditated decisions."

Read Ivan and Henrik's story here

Finn Juhl in Milano Furniture Fair - the Pelican Chair and FJ Panel System

Poet Sofa

46 Sofa in Chelsea Hotel Cologne