3-Bay wall unit by Poul Cadovius (Sold)
3-Bay teak ‘Cado’ wall unit, designed by Poul Cadovius and produced in his own Cado factory in Denmark, during the late 1960’s. The system consists of four original wooden floating supports of 202 cm, a cabinet with braided front and a simple shelf inside, a 3-drawer cabinet, a smaller cabinet with teak sliding doors and a shelf inside. The set also includes one shelf with a depth of 30 cm and one with a depth of 24 cm and three shelves with a depth of 20 cm. All brass coloured metal brackets and shelf holders and cabinet supports are included in the price. I’d you prefer black hooks, this is also possible without extra cost. The cabinets and shelves are imprinted on the back with ‘made in Denmark’, trademark sign of the Cado series. Also the halfmoon shaped handgrips on the cabinet with the sliding doors is only seen on the more luxurious Cado line. The Cadovius wall units are modular so you can organise the shelves and cabinets at will or expand your system later on. One of the cabinets has a small cable hole in the backside, further all the elements are in a very good condition with few using marks, as shown in the pictures. The braided front cabinet comes with a working lock and the original key.
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Dimensions:
W: 244 cm
D: 37,5 cm
H: 202 cm
Weight: approx. 60 kilo / total
Material: teak, metal
Poul Cadovius was born on january 27 of 1911 in Frederiksberg, Denmark. Originally trained as a saddler and upholsterer, he started working in traditional design. He later focused more on industrial design as he saw greater oppurtinities in this to innovate and impact modern life. His minimalistic aesthetic is considered a perfect marriage between form and function—industrial and organic, affordable and elegant.
“Most of us live on the bottom of a cube”, Poul Cadovius claimed. “If we put the walls even with the floor, we get a lot of space to live on” it was this idea that lead to the development of his revolutionary Royal wall unit system in 1948.
This design was revolutionary in that it utilized wall-mounted brackets, allowing the shelves to “float” and maximizing available floor space. It was one of the first of its kind and set the stage for the modular furniture movement that would define the post-war era. The Royal System (1948) shelving unit went on to win the gold medal at the Finland Furniture Fair in 1950 and silver medal at the XI Triennale di Milano 1957 and remained a hallmark of midcentury modern design throughout the 1950s and ‘60s.
In the 1960’s Cadovius came up with another line of wall units: the Cado System, with wooden corners supporting the shelves in stead of metal brackets. Since 1967 this luxurious line was produced in Cadovius own ‘Cado’ factory that he took over from France and Son. Although this was one of the first teak production facilities of industrial size in Denmark with over 300 employees, Cado became a household design name and the company worked with some of the country’s most famous designers like Arne Vodder, Grete Jalk and Finn Juhl.
Although his best selling products were unmistakenly his wall units, Cadovius patented over 400 designs in his life, from dining chairs to polyester mushroom shaped bus stands. Cadovius passed away in 2011 at the age of 99, leaving us with a true legacy of beautiful Danish design.
