Solid wood waste paper basket pp40

The Paper Basket was designed for Aarhus townhall. Wegner was assigned by Arne Jacobsen to design all of the interiors for this prestigious project. This resulted in many interesting chairs and desks, some of which were only produced for the project. The idea of the Paper Basket is quite simple. A solid base connected to the top ring by fourteen vertical slats. All components are made of solid wood. The top ring is particularly interesting as the original drawing for the Paper Basket shows a laminated circular construction. A principle similar to that implemented more than forty years later in the production of the Circle Chair. However, the paper baskets made for Aarhus townhall had a ring made from sections of solid wood cut into the circular shape. A rather unstable construction as the sections was glued end to end with only a minor gluing surface along the grains of the wood. Our current production of the ring is based on the pre-compression technique, where a piece of steamed wood is compressed about 20% in length causing the wood fibres to be flexible enough for a full solid piece to bend into a ring. The ends meet in a near tangential joint.