One day I was searching craigslist and there was a listing with 4 or 6 of these chairs, priced way way too cheap. The photos weren't very good, but they looked authentic. I wrote the seller and explained they were probably worth more, and would be marked "Johanne Hansen" if they were authentic.

I noticed something else from the photos in the ad. All of them had upholstered seat decks (JH-503), but two of the chairs had slots cut in the rails, which made me think they originally had woven cane seats (JH-501). One of these was badly broken and needed to be repaired.

David wrote me back, thanking me for the information. In the end he decided to have the (4) JH-503s refinished and reupholstered in black leather. I tried to buy the good JH-501 but after learning about the chairs, he decided to keep it. They have been in his family for over 60 years!

We reached an agreement - I would refinish and reweave the good chair and in return I'd get to keep the broken one. Deal.

Hi Eric,

Susan and I have been going through old family photos … and we found several from my aunt in NYC.   They show the Wegner-Hansen chairs that she would give us (40 years later).  

The location is their (she and her husband) apartment on East 66^th Street in Manhattan.

We thought you would appreciate seeing the chairs in a genuine mid-century setting. 

David sent a few photos of the chairs in their original home. How cool is that?

Before starting on the chairs I did a bunch of research and saved hundreds of images for reference. The earliest JH503s (1949-50) have the backrest wrapped in cane. They did this to hide the finger joints. In 1950 the construction of the backrest was improved (source: Wegner Just One Good Chair, Christian Olesen p133), the joints were more aesthetically pleasing, and they no longer wrapped the backrest in cane.

Here's an excellent article from Danish Design Review detailing the history of the round chair.

In the images below, there's a chair marked 1952 - this was at The Danish Chair exhibit at Design Museum Danmark in Copenhagen. The backrest is not wrapped, so I think it's safe to say the chairs I worked on are from 1949-1951.

Here's the mystery though. These two examples have a center support in the slit on the front rail. This is why the three strips of cane are there. All of the JH503s have this detail on the back rail, but very few have it on the front as well. It's not an improvement they kept, because all of the later chairs have a full groove along the front.

It was incredibly helpful to see the chair up close in Copenhagen. There are so many details to get right when you're trying to do an accurate restoration. How that front rail was wrapped, with the support in the center, was very difficult to figure out. There's a guy on instagram who was reweaving one, just like these two, and somehow he had a picture that showed exactly what I was looking for. Otherwise I would have just guessed. Nobody would ever know, especially since it's on the under side of the chair, but it mattered to me.

This wasn't my first time working with split cane, I've woven a CH23 with cane (and 2 with danish cord). The pattern is completely different on the JH503 and there was a big learning curve and a lot of trial and error.

The backrest repair was tricky to say the least. I basically just started glueing the obvious pieces back together, using dowels to strenghten the joint, and high strength epoxy instead of wood glue. Some pieces of wood were missing, so I used plasticine to fill the holes and shaped pieces of wood to match. A lot of test fitting, but it worked out.

Luckily the repairs will be covered by the cane. There's one small section that will be exposed, so I used a piece of teak there.

Refinishing the wood is easy. I like to be as gentle as possible, just using #0000 steel wool and teak oil. This removes the dirt and oils the wood at the same time. 4 or 5 passes and the chair usually looks pretty good and this method maintains the character and patina.

The caning on the backrest of David's JH503 had been painted white at some point. I was on the fence about what to do. I tried removing the paint with denatured alcohol, and what do you know? It worked. Incredibly time consuming, but we were able to preserve the original cane this way.

I haven't finished the backrest on my chair yet but will get to it soon. 

I'm incredibly grateful to David for the opportunity to refinish his chair, and to now have one of my own.