Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Furniture & Interiors
As wonderful as Danish design-focused stores, museums, hotels and restaurants are, the
very best place to see Danish design is in its natural environment: a Danish home. To the
Danes, good design is not just for museums and institutions; they live with it and use it
every day.
Visit a Danish home and you'll invariably find a Bang & Olufsen stereo and/or TV in
the living room, Poul Henningsen lamps hanging from the ceiling, Arne Jacobsen or Hans
Wegner chairs in the dining room, and the table set with Royal Copenhagen dinner sets,
Georg Jensen cutlery and Bodum glassware.
Modern Danish furniture focuses on a practical style and the principle that its design
should be tailored to the comfort of the user. This smooth, unadorned aesthetic traces its
roots to architect Kaare Klint, founder of the furniture design department at the Royal
Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen.
In 1949 one of Klint's contemporaries, Hans Wegner (1914-2007), created the Round
Chair. Its fluid, curving lines made it an instant classic and a model for many furniture de-
signers to follow, as well as helping establish the first successful overseas export market
for Danish furniture. A wonderful array of Wegner-designed chairs is displayed in the
Tønder Museum in the designer's home town.
A decade after Wegner's Round Chair, Arne Jacobsen created the Ant, a form of chair
designed to be mass-produced, which became the model for the stacking chairs now found
in schools and cafeterias worldwide. Jacobsen also designed the Egg and the Swan; both
are rounded, uncomplicated upholstered chairs with revolving seats perched on pedestal
stands.
Danish design prevails in stylish lamps as well. The country's best-known lamp design-
er was Poul Henningsen (1894-1967), who emphasised the need for lighting to be soft, for
the shade to cast a pleasant shadow and for the light bulb to be blocked from direct view.
His PH5 lamp created in 1958 remains one of the most popular hanging lamps sold in
Denmark today.
The clean lines of industrial design are also evident in the avant-garde sound systems
and televisions produced by Bang & Olufsen; and in Danish silver and cutlery design gen-
erally. The father of modern Danish silverwork was the sculptor and silversmith Georg
Jensen (1866-1935), who artistically incorporated curvilinear designs; his namesake com-
pany is still a leader in the field.
