Rooms & ProjectsPairs, Sets and Multiples: The Designer's Shortcut
Sourcing six matching chairs takes months. Buying them as one lot takes one bid. Why the trade watches the multiples first.
1920–1982
Danish cabinetmaker who built his own factory and spent forty years refining one thing: a dining chair with a woven paper cord seat.
Why they matter
Møller finished his cabinetmaking apprenticeship in 1939 and studied at the Aarhus School of Design rather than the Royal Academy, and the difference shows. He founded J.L. Møllers Møbelfabrik in Aarhus in 1944 and used it as his own workshop instead of designing for other people's factories.
What came out was a numbered run of dining chairs, models 71, 75, 77, 78 and 79 among them, in teak, rosewood and oak with hand-woven Danish paper cord seats. The frames are shaped rather than assembled from flat stock and the crest rails are carved to meet a back.
The factory is still in the family and still making them. Paper cord wears through in about forty years and is rewoven as a matter of course; the frames outlast it comfortably.
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Key forms & materials
Forms
- Model 71 chair
- Model 75 chair
- Model 77 chair
- Model 78 chair
- Model 79 chair
Materials
- Teak
- Rosewood
- Oak
- Danish paper cord
- Leather
What to look for
Marks, editions, patina and production partners — fact-checked for this designer.
- Look under the seat for the J.L. Møller stamp and, on many examples, a Danish furniture control stamp alongside it.
- A round metal J.L. Møller medallion indicates production before about 1970, when it was discontinued, which makes it a useful dating mark.
- Reweaving paper cord is routine maintenance rather than a restoration flaw, though a machine-tight new weave looks different from a settled old one.
- Rosewood examples are subject to import restrictions in some markets and are worth checking before shipping.
- Generic Danish paper cord chairs from other Jutland workshops are frequently sold as Møller on form alone.
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