Johannes Andersen

Danish furniture designer Johannes Andersen worked for many manufacturers in the 1950s and 1960s, from small Jutland workshops to Swedish producers, mostly in teak and rosewood.

Johannes Andersen is a very common Danish name, and his biography is poorly documented. Auction houses, including Bruun Rasmussen in Copenhagen, give his dates as 1903 to 1991, and several dealers add that he was born in Aarhus and trained as a cabinetmaker before opening his own workshop in the 1930s. We have found no primary record (obituary, civil record or museum authority file) to confirm this, and some dealers themselves note that the information is hard to verify. The furniture index of Designmuseum Danmark lists dozens of his designs for manufacturers such as George Petersen, Hovedstadens Møbelfabrik, C.F. Christensen and Uldum, from the mid-1950s onward.

• Uldum Møbelfabrik (Jutland): Juliane dining chair, 1960s, and other chairs and sideboards.
• C.F. Christensen, Silkeborg (CFC Silkeborg): model 206 coffee table, nicknamed Smile, around 1957.
• Trensum (Sweden): Capri sofa and coffee table range, mid-1960s.
• Other manufacturers cited by dealers include J. Skaaning and Søn, Christian Linneberg and Bernhard Pedersen and Søn.