Kay Bojesen Monkey: Teak, Limba and a Danish Toy Tradition

Ask someone to name one piece of Danish wooden design and the answer is usually the same: a monkey with long arms, hanging by one hand. Kay Bojesen first drew it in 1951, and it has been made ever since. This is where that figure comes from, why it is built out of two different woods, and how a plaything ended up on shelves in homes that have no children in them.

A silversmith who worked in wood

Kay Bojesen (1886–1958) trained as a silversmith under Georg Jensen, and that training runs through everything he later made in wood. Silver teaches you to think in profile. A spoon is judged from the side, by the way one curve runs into the next, and the wooden animals are judged in exactly the same way. The Monkey carries almost no detail: no carved fur, no painted face on the teak and limba version, no attempt at anatomy. It reads as a monkey because the proportions are right and the arms are long enough to be funny.

Bojesen is widely quoted as saying that the lines should smile, and that is a useful way to read the whole catalogue. Nothing in it is solemn. The animals, the Royal Guard figures, the songbirds: each of them has a tilt or a rounded shoulder that keeps it friendly. He spent a career arguing, quietly and at length, that useful things are allowed to be cheerful, and the Monkey is the clearest surviving piece of that argument.

Turned, jointed and made to be posed

Danish wooden figures of this family are turned rather than cut from a single block. Head, body and limbs each begin as a section of wood shaped on a lathe, which is why the forms sit so close to spheres, cylinders and tapered cones. Nothing on the Monkey is a shape a lathe cannot make easily, and that restraint is half of the design. A turner works fast and repeats accurately, so the figure could be made in numbers without losing the crispness of the drawing.

The parts are then jointed, and that is where the Monkey separates itself from every other animal in the range. Its arms and legs move. It can hang from a shelf edge or a curtain rail by one hand, sit on the front of a bookcase with its legs over the drop, hold a small object, or fold its hands in its lap. The joints are made to be posed by hand, without force, so the correct way to handle it is slowly. Move an arm and the room shifts slightly. That is a large amount of character for an object with no expression at all.

Handling is also the point. These figures were never drawn to sit behind glass, and the oiled surface is meant to take fingerprints and the odd knock. A Monkey that has been picked up for thirty years looks better than one that has not.

Two woods, one figure

The Monkey is made from oiled teak and oiled limba, and that pairing does the job that paint would otherwise have to do. The darker teak makes up the body and the limbs. The paler limba is used where the figure needs to read as skin: the face, the ears, the hands and the feet. Set the two side by side and the eye completes the animal on its own, which is why no features have to be added. It is a colour scheme achieved entirely with material.

Wood is a living material, so grain and tone vary from figure to figure. Two Monkeys made in the same week will not match exactly, and the oiled finish deepens with light and use. That variation is worth knowing before you choose, because it means the figure you receive is specific rather than generic.

The same idea is worked through other pairs of woods. The Monkey small comes in Teak/Limba, Oak/Maple and Oak/Smoked oak. Oak with maple gives a lighter, cooler figure that suits pale timber and white walls; oak with smoked oak narrows the contrast to little more than a shade, which reads as quieter and more graphic from across a room. The Monkey mini goes further still, adding dark stained oak alongside a run of painted finishes: Vintage Blue, Vintage Green, Vintage Yellow, Pink, Light green, Grey and Turquoise. A Monkey mini vintage red is made as well, finished in the same workshop tradition.

Three sizes, three different jobs

Size decides where a Monkey can go and what it does once it is there. The measurements below are the ones given for each figure, with the depth accounting for the arms and legs in their extended position.

• Monkey medium teak/limba: 28 cm high, 11 cm wide, 29 cm deep, 0.54 kg. The version most people picture. It has enough weight to sit convincingly on a low shelf or a wide windowsill, and enough reach to hang from a bookcase without looking stranded.
• Monkey small: 18.5 cm high, 19.5 cm wide, 6.5 cm deep, 0.17 kg. Light, and wider than it is tall with the arms out. It works on a narrow shelf, a desk, or the ledge above a doorway, and it is the size that gets moved around the house most.
• Monkey mini: 9.5 cm high, 10 cm wide, 3.5 cm deep, 0.02 kg. Small enough to sit on the lip of a picture frame or a stack of books, and light enough that the painted versions can be grouped in twos and threes without the arrangement becoming heavy.

A useful rule: the larger the figure, the more space it needs around it. The medium wants a shelf to itself, or at least a clear stretch of one. The mini prefers company, either its own or a few books. If you are weighing one size against another for a particular spot, our guide to Kay Bojesen Monkey sizes sets the range out side by side.

From the nursery to the shelf

The Monkey began as a toy, and it still behaves like one. Then it moved. Somewhere between the toy shelf and the living room, a generation of Danish households started leaving these figures out permanently, and the Monkey turned into a household object that happens to be posable. Two things made that possible. The first is the material: oiled hardwood belongs in a room of adult furniture in a way that plastic or painted tin never quite does. The second is the absence of a face. Because nothing is drawn on, the figure does not read as juvenile, and the same object works on a nursery windowsill and on a shelf of design books.

Caring for one is straightforward. Keep it away from radiators and out of direct sun, both of which dry and fade oiled wood. Wipe it with a dry, soft cloth. It is not for the dishwasher, and it does not want to be soaked or scrubbed. Beyond that, use it. The joints will loosen slightly over years of posing, which is what they are for.

The figures are still made to Bojesen's drawings by Rosendahl Design Group, in the same woods and to the same proportions, which is why a Monkey bought now sits happily beside one that has been in a family for decades. That continuity is the reason these turn up so often as gifts for births, moves and anniversaries: the recipient can hand the same object on. If you want to see how the Monkey fits with the rest of his work, the Royal Guard figures and the songbirds among them, browse the full Kay Bojesen collection.