Designed by Poul Kjærholm in 1956 as part of a family of furniture for his own home.

The freestanding screen in Oregon Pine veneer exemplifies the Danish designer’s pure aesthetic language – its development stretching the limits of plywood manufacture and resulting in the most simple and elegant form in a serial format.

Kjærholm and his wife Hanne, an architect, built their family home in Rungsted Kyst, on the coast north of Copenhagen in 1961. Poul Kjærholm planned the furniture precisely for the space, particularly the main open room that ran the length of the house facing the sea. The freestanding screen played an integral role in dividing the living and dining areas in this room. Its 140cm height was determined by Kjærholm’s desire to create a feeling of seclusion when sitting at the dining table while allowing a full perspective of the room when standing up. The long grain of the Oregon Pine suited the verticality of the screen and would develop a rich patina over time.

FH PK111 Oregon Pine Poul kjaerholm

After being made especially for the house, the PK 111 modular screen went into production at Kold Christensen from 1964. It was later manufactured for short periods in the 1980s and early 2000s. Reintroducing the PK111 marks a milestone for Fritz Hansen as an elegant and functional new product line and an addition to the Kjærholm Collection that amplifies the significance of the designer’s body of work in totality.

“I’ve had a long-lasting love affair with this screen,” says Christian Andresen, Fritz Hansen’s Director of Craft & Heritage. “Poul Kjærholm always described himself as a furniture architect creating spaces, and you can argue that the screen is architectural and also a design-slash-interior object that shows his ability to combine function and beauty. A screen divider that creates a space within the space that suited his modern open house structure and works as well now in contemporary life.”

A sketch by Hanne Kjærholm planning the furniture in situ in the new family home encapsulates her husband’s vision for furniture and space, the screen depicted in a rich orange brown like patinated Oregon Pine.

FH PK111 Oregon Pine Night Poul kjaerholm

As with his other furniture, Kjærholm was building on ancient archetypes, in this case Japanese and Oriental screens, along with some appreciation of the modern equivalents such as those created by Alvar Aalto and Charles and Ray Eames in the preceding decades. Kjærholm’s revolution was the modular design, which he managed to distil into simple perfectly executed woodwork.

“Kjærholm’s concept of producing elements that you can put together in an organic shape or something architectural and flat, then separate and store, was a genius idea. And it was an extremely elegant way of using plywood,” says Andresen. Each element is comprised of two pieces made from the same mould, skewed when they are put together to create a gap, so they can be slotted together.

Thomas Kjærholm grew up in the family home, living with the screen exactly as his father had imagined it. For him and sister Krestine, the PK111 adds another element to the Kjærholm Collection, presenting a more complete picture of his father’s oeuvre to a new generation of followers.

“It is important that my father’s pieces are in production, that they are shown. The screen brings another dimension to Fritz Hansen’s Kjærholm Collection and to me it feels like it is now where it belongs. In the context of its design in 1956 it is a pretty serious piece of plywood development but the outcome is so simple, just two pieces which are skewed a little bit. That exemplifies my father’s approach. It was a site specific design that has a universal appeal. The screen is extremely functional but also organic and very suited to modern living.”

PK111 screen in Oregon Pine comprising six panels, with the option to purchase additional panels. Each panel measures 29.5 cm (w) × 140 cm (h) and the full screen extends to 134 cm in width when all panels are connected.

FH Series Poul kjaerholm