An Armchair Modeled on a Portrait

In the 1940s, Hans J. Wegner became fixated on a portrait of Danish merchants seated in Ming dynasty chairs — the kind of grand, armed seat a 17th-century Chinese official would have used. Wegner didn't want to copy the chair; he wanted to understand why it worked, then build his own answer. Between 1943 and 1949 he produced a whole series of so-called "China Chairs," stripping the original down piece by piece. The CH24, released in 1949 and put into production by Carl Hansen & Søn in 1950, was the simplest and most affordable version of that study — and the one that outlived every other attempt.

Photo: Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo — image source

One Steam-Bent Piece, Split in Two

The detail that gives the chair its name is the Y-shaped back splat: what looks like two separate curved arms is actually one continuous piece of steam-bent wood that forks at the back, like the wishbone of a bird. It does the structural work of a backrest and the visual work of the chair's whole signature at once. Below it, the seat is woven from roughly 100 meters of paper cord by hand, a technique Wegner borrowed from traditional Danish rope-seated chairs because it was sturdy, breathable, and far cheaper to produce than upholstery.

Why a "Simplified" Chair Became the Standard

Of all the China Chairs Wegner designed, the CH24 was the one he deliberately made easiest to produce in volume — fewer joints, no upholstery, a seat a single craftsperson could weave by hand. That decision to simplify, rather than refine for its own sake, is exactly why it survived: it was cheap enough to put in a dining room, strong enough to stack up decades of daily use, and distinctive enough that it never read as generic. Carl Hansen & Søn has produced it continuously since 1950, in dozens of wood finishes and cord colors, without changing the joinery.

What the Wishbone Chair Teaches About Buying Wood Furniture

• A single structural detail can carry an entire design. The forked backrest is the only truly unusual move in an otherwise plain chair, and it's enough to make it unmistakable.
• Hand-craft doesn't have to mean fragile. A woven cord seat looks delicate but is rated for decades of daily dining-chair use.
• The most "iconic" version is often the simplified one. Wegner's more ornate China Chairs are design-history footnotes; the stripped-down CH24 is the one still in every design-conscious dining room.

If the appeal is solid wood joinery you can actually see and trust, our Retro French Wood Stool carries the same conviction — solid wood, nothing hidden, built to be looked at as closely as it's sat on.

The Bottom Line

Hans Wegner spent six years and a whole series of chairs figuring out what to remove from a 17th-century Chinese armchair. What he kept — one forked piece of wood and a hand-woven seat — is still in production more than 75 years later, mostly unchanged.