Poul Kjærholm: Timeless Minimalism

Poul Kjærholm worked in steel and stone when his Scandinavian contemporaries worked in wood — a material choice that perhaps explains why his furniture found its most devoted audience not in Copenhagen but in Japan, where structural discipline and restraint were already a native language. This monograph approaches his work through a specific and revealing frame: the private collection of Noritsugu Oda, a Japanese enthusiast who specializes in chairs and who has spent years assembling Kjærholm's furniture with the kind of single-minded focus that collecting at this level requires. Some fifty pieces, along with archival drawings and photographs, trace Kjærholm's career from his early years under Hans J. Wegner to his death at the age of fifty-one.

The text is largely in Japanese — which will stop some readers and confirm for others that they are in exactly the right place. The drawings hold up in any language.

Difficult to find outside Japan.

208 pages · 8.7 × 11.8 in · paperback · Japanese–English