Collection 2024
Timeless Scandinavian Design
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Our Story
Founded in 2014, Dagmar produces classic 20th century Scandinavian furniture for the modern home. Scandinavian Modern design represents the perfect marriage between aesthetic beauty, quality craftsmanship and functionality. This feat was achieved by a movement of culture-defining designers and craftsmen in a golden era from 1930 – 1970. Thanks to the creativity and skill of these visionaries, Scandinavian Modern design remains crucially relevant nearly 100 years since its inception.
At Dagmar we use our expert knowledge of this period to select designs, both iconic and obscure, to reissue as part of our carefully curated heritage collection. Our furniture is authentically reproduced in Denmark and Sweden by highly skilled craftspeople with an obsessive attention to detail. Our expertise in the field has been developed over more than a decade of restoring and selling thousands of vintage Scandinavian design pieces at our workshops in London.
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The Clam Chair
The cornerstone of our collection is the iconic Clam Chair – a unique piece of Danish design history with an intriguing backstory. The Clam Chair was designed in 1944 in Copenhagen by Danish upholsterer Arnold Madsen. As he had no formal design training, Arnold first brought his design to life by forming a plaster model by hand. This allowed him to fully visualise the chair’s unique, organic shape.
Arnold searched the workshops of Copenhagen for several months looking for a cabinetmaker with the vision and skill to create a timber prototype for the chair. Eventually he met a gifted young man named Henry Schubell, and in 1945 the pair founded their eponymous company: Madsen & Schubell in order to produce the chair that became known in Danish as the ‘Muslingstol’ (Clam Chair). The collaboration was a great success and In 1953 the Norwegian company Vik & Blindheim acquired the rights from Madsen & Schubell to manufacture the chair exclusively for the Norwegian market.
Arnold & Henry continued to produce furniture together until the 1960s, producing notable designs such as the Pragh and the Oda chairs.
The Clam Chair stayed in production with Vik & Blindheim until the mid-1960s before laying dormant for several decades. In 2012 original Clam Chairs reupholstered in sheepskin started to appear on the high-end auction market, achieving some astonishing results. This new surge of interest led to a search for the designer of this seemingly mysterious chair. The Clam was at first wrongly credited to the Norwegian furniture retailer Martin Olsen, and then infamously to the Danish architect Philip Arctander. This curious attribution, which was widely accepted by collectors and dealers desperate for a name to attach to the chair, was made without any supporting evidence and quickly rescinded by the Danish auction house responsible.
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In 2019 a group of independent researchers took it upon themselves to correct the record and tracked down Arnold Madsen’s daughter Johna who confirmed that her father was in fact the designer of the chair and provided evidence from her family archive to support the claim. Henry Schubell’s son Flemming, who worked in his father’s factory for many years, also gave a detailed first-hand account of how the original frames had been made. As a leading dealer in original Clam Chairs, Dagmar founder Aaron FitzGerald contributed to the research project with detailed knowledge of the 1950s productions. He then proposed to the Madsen family that an authentic new edition of the chair should be developed to honour Arnold’s legacy, 80 years after its inception.
The new Dagmar edition of the Clam Chair is made to order in Sweden in small batches using traditional joinery and upholstery methods by a team of craftspeople with generations of experience.
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Arnold Madsen (1907 – 1989)
Vik & Blindheim advertisement, c1950s
Original Clam Chair photo from the Madsen family archive
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Dedication to Craftsmanship
Quality is the driving force behind everything we do at Dagmar. Scandinavian furniture is rightly recognised as the highest quality in the world and it is our duty to honour these standards when reissuing classic designs. We are uncompromising and obsessive in crafting the very finest furniture possible and it is these characteristics that define our approach to production, connecting us directly to the designers whose work we care so deeply about. By combining time-honoured traditions with modern technology in the making of our collection we create future heirlooms that will stand the test of time.
Our background in fine furniture restoration gives us an intimate understanding of the methods that defined the golden era of Scandinavian design. Our restoration, development and upholstery workshops in London are staffed by a passionate and highly-skilled team with decades of combined experience. All of our newly
produced furniture starts its life in this unique environment before moving to carefully chosen production partners in Denmark and Sweden. This approach guarantees authenticity in our finished pieces whilst contributing to the rich tradition of Scandinavian furniture making.
Selecting the finest timber and upholstery materials is crucial to our process. We work strictly with high quality raw materials from Europe and North America for our frames. This is essential to guaranteeing longevity and robustness in furniture designed for everyday use. All of our pieces are finished by hand with carefully developed processes to enhance the natural beauty of the wood. Each piece will look and feel unique and will continue to age and gain character over time. Thanks to this considered approach our furniture will last for generations.
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MEASUREMENTS
Width
Height
Depth
Seat Height
(16.5”)
MEASUREMENTS
Width
Height
Depth
Seat Height
80cm (31.5”) 84cm (33”) 85cm (33.5”) 42cm (16.5”)
MEASUREMENTS
Width
Height
Depth
Seat Height
80cm (31.5”) 81cm (31.9”) 77cm (30.3”) 42cm (16.5”)
MEASUREMENTS
Width
Height
Depth
Seat Height
MEASUREMENTS
Width
Height
Leg Height
78cm (30.7”) 98cm (38.6”)
80cm (31.5”)
43cm (16.9”)
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Clam Chair
Karu Chair
Sampo Chair
Luupo Ottoman
54 Chair
56cm 40cm
45cm 10cm
82 84 85 80 80 65 80 78 56 56 77 80 81 98 45
or
65cm (25.6”) 82cm (32.3”) 80cm (31.5”) 42cm
MEASUREMENTS
MEASUREMENTS
MEASUREMENTS
MEASUREMENTS
Leg
MEASUREMENTS
Seat Width
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Clam Stool
Karu Ottoman
Sampo Ottoman
Esko Stool
54 Ottoman
Leg Width Height
Leg Height Width Height Depth
Height
Height Width Height Depth
Height 48,5cm 40cm 40cm 29cm 56cm 40cm 48cm 12,5cm 56cm 40cm 48cm 10cm 56cm 40cm 48cm 10cm
Width Height Depth Leg
Leg
Width Height Depth 61,5cm 40cm 40cm 40 40 40 40 40 61,5 56 56 56 48,5
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Dagmar
info@dagmar-design.com +44 (0)203 8862 032
Office: 161 Rosebery Avenue, London EC1R 4QX
Showroom: 5-8 Hardwick Street, London EC1R 4RG
dagmar-design.com
Contact Us
Timeless Scandinavian Design
