Arnold Madsen is still relatively unknown as a designer, but together with his business partner Henry Schubell he was responsible for a number of chairs that made history. The biggest yet still untold story, however, seems to be the chair that started the story of Madsen and Schubell. It was none other than the Clam chair.
According to consistent reports from Arnold’s daughter Johna and Henry’s son Flemming, Arnold Madsen designed the chair in 1944 in his small basement workshop in Gothersgade, Copenhagen. Since he was an upholsterer and not a cabinetmaker or an architect, he didn’t draw his design but made a plaster model instead and went in search of a carpenter who could make the frame for him. Because the task was complicated, some carpenters turned it down.
Only a foreman at „Winther & Winding“ named Henry Schubell was up to the task and made the frame. Arnold Madsen was so impressed that he offered Schubell to start a joint company. The clam chair (picture 1) was their first model, and it sold magnificently. In 1953 the two even sold the licence for the chair, together with three other models (model 4 high, model 4 low and Pragh), to the Norwegian company Vik and Blindheim (see ad, picture 2).
Shortly afterwards Madsen and Schubell removed it from their own range. But according to Flemming Schubell, wo worked in the company from 1958 on, the plaster model remained in the workshop for years – as a reminder of the early days.
The model is gone now, the company closed in the early eighties. But in 1957 – on Arnold’s 50th birthday – four employees of the company wrote a song for Arnold – referring to the „Musling“ chair that started it all. The lyrics are still preserved today (picture 3).
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