National Treasure - Georg Jensen

I'm getting kind of design sentimental these days. I found an old book about the faces of Copenhagen in the 1890s and amongst those amazing people of the past was Georg Jensen – designer of silver wear and jewellery, and I guess also known as one of the fathers of ‘Danish Design’ - and what a face he has... He lived from 1866-1935 and started selling his now world famous silver wear in a shop at Bredgade in the heart of Copenhagen in 1904.
For many Danes Georg Jensen’s designs have become a household name and most of us own something made by the Georg Jensen company whether it be jewellery, house ware or more industrial design objects. I own two modest pieces of Georg Jensen jewellery and they were given to me by my parents and grandparents as special gifts when I was younger. As I became older these items sort of grew out of my style, but lately I’ve rediscovered some of the original jewellery designed by the man himself and they are beautiful.The pieces designed by Georg himself from brooches to necklaces are from around 1910s -1930s. Some of them are still sold, but others only survive as antiques. I really like the Art Nouveau style jewellery with silver flowers or plants elegantly surrounding a stone - often an amber or moon stone.Recently the George Jensen company has launched a collection called 'Moonlight' of jewellery with George's old designs. The pieces are lovely and classic, but still with more modern coloured moon stones instead of the darker reds of amber and deep green malachite that are found in the antiques.

Home of Finn Juhl

Place of the month May:
In this positively amazing summer weather I can’t find any good excuses to stay inside anymore. So I made my first ever visit to the Ordrupgaard museum north of Copenhagen.

The garden there is lovely and the mix of the original building with the new one is interesting and beautiful.
Right next to Ordrupgaard is the house and home of Danish designer and architect Finn Juhl who died in 1989. His home is a part of Ordrupgaard and it’s open to the public. I’ve made it the place of the month in May because it is such a cool experience to see his home. He has built and designed everything himself.
Finn Juhl is not as well know in the broad public as the grand old men of Danish Design PH, Arne Jacobsen or Hans Wegner. But his style and forms are just as interesting and his home is a master piece of balancing colours, shapes and light. His furniture, especially his chairs, are really well know outside of Denmark as well.
To walk around in his home gave you a complete new way of experiencing his design and choices of decoration. In connection with the opening of his house Ordrupgaard has an exhibition showing in detail how he managed to combine his own furniture with colours and his choices of art. Here you can see a small online slideshow of his house.

A trip down designer memory lane

Here is a small post about my visit last week to the Danish Museum of Decoration and Design here in Copenhagen. I decided to pay a visit to the museum because I haven’t been there for ages. It is a bit of an old fashion museum in the sense that after Danish Design Centre opened a few years back The Danish Museum of Decoration and Design has become more of a historical museum looking back in time. What’s on display here is the history of Danish design and general design and it only pays little attention to the ongoing developments. The standing exhibition is therefore a very large part of the museum and there are only few and rather small special exhibitions. This is the reason I guess why I haven’t set foot in the museum for quite a few years; seeing it all again now was a lot of fun, but I don’t think I’ll be coming back to see the permanent exhibition any time soon.

However it brought back a lot of childhood memories of the homes of my grand parents; many of the designer classics on display there were and are still parts of Danish homes today. Hans Wegner chairs and Verner Panton lamps are still very popular today and a lot of Børge Mogensen’s furniture designs were not that expensive in the 50s and 60s. The legendary lamps created by Poul Henningsen and the B&O radios were part of both my grandparents’ and my childhood home. Seeing this standing exhibition was therefore fun and sort of historically educative, but it did not show me anything about what’s happing with Danish design these days and I missed that a bit.

Copenhagen in illustration

I have always been very fascinated by Danish old school poster design. The visiting exhibition shows posters and illustrations by Danish illustrator Ib Andersen . Although I at first thought I didn’t know him, he has created many of the well known posters for example for Tivoli:

With the same brilliant perspective on street life and everyday scenery as Touslouse-Lautrec Ib Andersen also made illustrations for newspapers such as Politiken and Berlingske Tidende in the 1930s and onwards. These examples show how he both captures the city's loneliness and isolation, and can turn shapes and shadows into artistic master pieces.

But Ib Andersen's illustrations are also legendary in other less acknowledged ways – he is the guy behind the illustrations on the old Danish 20,50,100 and 1000 kroner bills. I know it seems silly to get all sentimental about illustrations on money, but for some reason I really think that they deserve greater artistic attention. These days when we're all using our credit cards more and more and a lot of cash becomes rare I think it would be cool if we could take time and look at the bills - they are small pieces of artwork.

For your eyes only

Even though I perceive myself as the ultimate Nerd Girl I’ve never actually had to wear the ultimate nerd girl accessory – glasses. My parents both need glasses, strong ones, but for some reason I was blessed with (so far) perfect eyesight. Anyway I’ve always been fascinated by cool ways of wearing glasses. So when three design students from the Danish School of Design created a special limited edition collection of eyewear it really caught my eye. Their collection called Framework is now available at the Danish optician chain Synoptik.

I first saw their sketches for glasses at the annual Danish School of Design graduate exposition last summer at Øksenhallen. What I saw there was a completely new way of turning the frame into artwork; Glasses upside down with very elaborate graphics. Forget Dame Edna style, this way of designing new eyewear really has potential for new trends.

As I left the exposition I remember thinking that they were incredibly original ideas, but that the designs had such a distinct and elaborate look that they would probably not go in mainstream eyewear. However, now it seems I was proven wrong. Synoptik arranged a design competition and the three designers Sofia Ohlsson, Leena Lundgard and Ulrik Martin Larsen won with their project ‘I Would Wear’- now turned into the Framework collection. The designs for Synoptik are much simpler and down to earth than the ‘graduate’ sketches I originally saw, but as you can see (the first photo above) they still have the cool asymmetric lines and shapes.

I’m not sure I’d buy these if I did need glasses as they are very arty and make a strong statement. On the other hand they are so cool and bring new life to whatever look you have.