In 1948 Poul Kjaerholm (pronounced cure-holm), completed his training as cabinetmaker and moved to Copenhagen. There, he enrolled in the furniture department of the School of Arts and Craft to prepare for a career as an industrial designer. Coincidentally, his principal instructor at the school was Hans Wegner. After three years of classes, as a graduation project, students were required to design and construct an original piece of furniture. So in 1951, Kjaerholm presented his first piece as a furniture designer as part of this graduation project. He called it the Elementstol or "Element" chair, as a way to describe a simple object that could be used in a variety of settings. For the Element Chair, he used a bent steel frame wrapped in a halyard line, the braided cord used on sailboats. The really unique part of the Element Chair design was that he started with a single piece of half-inch steel plate, cut out the chair pattern with a metal saw, and then bent into the chair into shape. His intention was to create a chair with a continuous frame that did not require joints or fasteners for connections. He also drew inspiration Wegner"s Flag Halyard chair of 1950 which used panels of halyard line over a welded frame.
