Next Door

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The full name of this shop in Østerbro is NEXT DOOR Recycle your rooms. Christine Løschenkohl Holm and Christine Heiberg sell furniture, ceramics, glassware and rugs and textiles mainly dating from the mid 20th century. The shop opened last summer but is already well established.

They have agents scouting for good pieces and they use an Instagram site and Squarepics and Iconosquare well as a very appropriate ways to show customers what has just arrived in the shop. The turn round of stock is rapid … I walk past here a couple of times a week to get to my local coffee shop or to look into Goods … and it is always beautifully arranged.

One really strong characteristic of Danish homes is the way that good design is mixed with skill to match Classic mid-century design with current pieces or to have starkly modern pieces of furniture in old rooms with panelling and ornate plasterwork or to use antique pieces in starkly modern glass and steel apartments.

What is unusual at Next Door is the striking and confident use of strong colour and strong pattern that has not been a part of typical Danish design for many years. Probably the style is closer to that found in Sweden in shops like Svenskt Tenn in Stockholm. The team at Next Door told me that one aim for the shop is to encourage people to use colour and pattern with more confidence. To help they also offer a design and advice service.

 

Next Door Dag Hammardkjölds Alle 33, 2100 Copenhagen Ø

Kitub

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The web site for the shop has the heading KITUB a small shop in Copenhagen … and it is small … but it is has a good and really interesting selection of hand-made ceramics, small ceramic sculptures, textiles, wall hangings and clothing. 

For me, what makes this shop particularly important is that it carefully occupies an interesting middle ground … many of the pieces sold here are by local craftsmen and are hand made but the aesthetic is very much the clean, straightforward lines and the appropriate use of colour and restrained pattern found in most classic Danish design but usually now associated with large-scale manufacturing.

As at Next Door, Mette Sørensen, the owner of Kitub, uses Instagram and Pinterest to keep customers updated. The Instagram site is really very good. Generally, I’m not a great fan of Instagram … I get annoyed by selfies and too many photos that should be headed “heh look what I’m doing now” … but the photos on the Kitub Instagram site are carefully produced and include good details of textiles and ceramics that are taken under natural light in the shop, and are all the better for that, but there are also some photographs of local scenes; photographs from visits to workshops and studios; photos of art in local galleries and so on that all help to explain the taste and the interests that lie behind the selection for the shop. 

What I think I can see here is that shops like Kitub are carefully curated … they cannot compete head on with big design retailers in terms of range or amount of stock but, like an art gallery, they can sell their expertise and sell a clear and specific understanding of their chosen areas of design. When I discussed this with Mette she looked slightly sceptical … I got the impression that maybe I was making it all seem too precious. 

As with the other independent shops in Copenhagen, described in these posts, there is a strong sense of being in and of the community. When you are in Kitub local people going by wave or stick their head round the door to say hello and chat. This close relationship extends to a strong bond with the makers and craftspeople whose work is sold here. On one visit I arrived for the tail end of a discussion between Mette and a potter about what was selling well and just why and, looking forward, what colours and glazes might be tried for local customers … a really good form of feed back.

 

Kitub, Classensgade 10 ST TV, 2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark

Kitub on Instagram

DANSKmadeforrooms

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DANSKmadeforrooms is in the rapidly changing Vesterbro area of Copenhagen. In fact it is now two shops a few doors apart. The main shop has furniture, art, books and magazines and lamps while the second shop has kitchenware and glass and table ceramics. 

This is a very different Danish taste …  still clean and well designed pieces but thinner, more industrial in inspiration but elegant … much of the furniture is metal … it’s sort of stripped back but almost delicate. Certainly very very refined. You get a very strong idea of the aesthetic and the sense of style that drives the shop by just looking at their web site. This is the style and aesthetic also found in furniture from the Copenhagen company Frama so it is not surprising that Dansk sell their stools. This is certainly Danish design but not within the tradition of the cabinetmakers serving comfortable middle-class Copenhagen families.

What is also interesting and unusual for Copenhagen is that many of the pieces are not Danish although without any doubt they have been chosen carefully because they still respect an essentially Classic Danish taste. It is the idea of trying different directions with design here so things do not become complacent. This brings in ideas from other designers and from other countries and says heh … what about this? … what if we give these a Danish twist?

The kitchen shop has concrete floors and industrial shelving to display a good, unusual and very interesting selection of items including storage containers in thin industrial glass, enamelled cookware and storage containers, cutlery and very elegant serving spoons and forks. Some of the pieces are from Japan but then you realise that these don’t stand out immediately so you can see here an interesting exchange of ideas between Japanese and Scandinavian designers … a sense of overlapping taste and a two-way exchange of ideas for the way natural materials can be used and about the way appropriate forms evolve. 

 

DANSKmadeforrooms, Istedgade 80, 1650 Copenhagen V, Denmark

DANSKkitchen, Istedgade 64, 1650 Copenhagen V, Denmark

Anne Black

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This shop is different again and certainly different in its business model. Anne Black is primarily a ceramic company supplying selected shops throughout the world. The pieces are designed in Denmark but produced by hand in their factory in Vietnam.

Obviously, the Copenhagen store on Gammel Kongevej stocks a good range of the ceramics, but they do not dominate the store … in fact far from it. Again, as with the other independent shops in the city, there is a very strong sense of a personal taste behind the selection of pieces that includes women’s clothing (there is now a separate shop for men’s clothing a few doors down) but also French furniture, unusual glass light fittings, textiles, magazines and a very good selection of glassware for the table.

 

 

Anne Black, Gammel Kongevej 103, 1850 Frederiksberg, Denmark

Eric Landon at Normann

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For most large design stores an important part of their real estate is the shop frontage to the street … for that all-important area of shop window display. The Normann store in Copenhagen is rather different. It has a relatively tight frontage onto the busy shopping street of Østerbrogade and that is mostly glass doors. These lead into a square area, almost like a lobby, before it narrows down further to a long entrance, almost a wide corridor, to the shop proper. There the space opens out into a wide, bright and interesting space with changes of level, including wide steps down to a lower retail area and steps up to a wide and higher area at the back that is often used for specific displays and presentations. 

The explanation for this slightly unconventional arrangement is that the main part of the building is actually in the courtyard areas, in the centre of the block, and in effect the long entrance is the way through the apartment building on the street. This site has a complex and interesting history being at different times a water distillery, a theatre, a sound studio and a cinema. Was the slightly unconventional premises seen as a gamble when Normann took on the building as its flagship store in 2005? Certainly it has to be an asset now rather than a liability … with a well-established and growing reputation, the company is well beyond the stage of needing to draw in passing trade and is very clearly a deliberate destination store for its customers.

This long entrance has deep, well-lit shelving along one side that can be used for more traditional displays of items for sale but the area is also used for important and carefully focused displays on various themes including a sophisticated and very well presented exhibition here when they launched the new Form range of chairs and tables at the beginning of the year. That included detailed design drawings and an explanation of the design process along with small but significant displays of construction details … all really important to encourage buyers to understand and then appreciate the product.

 

 

Yesterday afternoon I stopped off at Normann and caught the second period of residence here of the American-born but Copenhagen-based potter Eric Landon. His own studio, Tortus, is in a courtyard off Kompagnistræde in the centre of Copenhagen and his Tortus Boutique is on Badstuestræde at number 17 but for the day he had set up his potters’ wheel in the entrance area of Normann where he worked producing a growing number of unfired vases but there was also a good display of the finished, glazed and fired wares.

 

 

Further along the entrance were displays of glass and pottery of the full Normann range giving the demonstration and the shop display a clear theme.

Events like this are not a gimmick. Food stores have long seen the value of having specific demonstrations of cooking to promote new products or new producers but this is much less common in design stores. Talking briefly to Eric Landon it was clear very quickly that he is passionate and articulate about his craft. A customer can see not just the end product and not just the processes and the skill that lead up to the completed piece but also the thought processes, the design work, the exploration of the possibilities of the materials and forms used in different ways or how slight but deliberate changes can change the character of a piece.

For design at a wider level it begins to break down the false divisions between designers, makers and manufacturers. Initially, industrial production was seen as inferior to craftsmanship but it produced glass, ceramics, textiles and tableware, among other things, that were cheap and readily available. At first the wealthiest buyers preferred their furniture, like their suits, hand made. But gradually, machine-made goods have for most, become synonymous with consistent quality and crafts with something that is inconsistent, looks “hand made” and is not as good as the machine made item. 

 

 

What the ceramics by Eric Landon shows is that the care and consideration given to each vase is an important selling point but more than that, the intellectual process involved in deciding on the shape, form, colour and so on of an individual piece is the same intellectual process involved in designing a good chair or a good piece of glassware. 

In exhibitions or with an event like this but also in their online catalogue, that profiles individual designers, Normann reconnects the objects with the very real people who conceived them. 

 

norman Copenhagen

Tortus

Ung Svensk Form - Malmö

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POM - Piece of Me table - one of a series of three desks by Frida Erson and Martin Eckerberg

On the wall behind POPOP by Ida Pettersson

A new exhibition, Ung Svensk Form, opened at the Form Design Centre in Malmö on Friday. It is a show by young Swedish designers and includes textiles, ceramics and glass, furniture, jewellery and fashion. 

This is a competition and exhibition that has been staged ten times by Svensk Form since 1998 and many previous exhibitors are now well established either within the Swedish design professions or internationally. It is open to students and to young designers under 36. As well as the exhibition of their works which go on tour, designers are awarded scholarships, practical placements and workshops to gain more experience and an understanding of production processes.

The works included prototypes and concepts to show artistic experimentation.

 

Charlie Styrbjörn - Ladder produced by Gebrüder Thonet of Vienna and his Part Goat chair

 

Umami table and service - dining table in ash with powder coated steel legs and glasses and dinnerware which have rounded bases by Sofia Almqvist

 

Snow Shoe Chair by Hampus Penttinen

 

Jacquard-woven waffle binding by Matilda Dominique

 

A list of the designers and a copy of the exhibition catalogue are available on line.

The competition and exhibition are supported by IKEA and the Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair.

The exhibition continues at Form/Design Center in Malmö until 7 June

 

 

Bella Center Flea Market

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just one of three main spaces

Today and tomorrow for the first big Flea Market of the Spring at the Bella Center in Copenhagen. It’s almost too big. After strolling up and down a dozen aisles my eyes glaze over and I begin to forget what I saw where so there is no back tracking if I decide, on reflection, I should have bought something. 

Having said that, this is the place to get your eye in … particularly if you are looking for lighting or kitchenware and glassware from the mid 20th century. And it’s a good place to get to know dealers  … many trading here also have shops in the city where they hold more stock. 

There are some stalls with furniture although for larger pieces a better starting point might be the auction houses in the city. Every week through the summer there will also be smaller flea markets at Israels Plads on Thursdays and Fridays and on the square in front of the Thorvaldsen Museum on Friday and Saturday. Glass and ceramics and cutlery and lighting from the 1950s, 60s and 70s are very collectible or, even better, why not use these things every day. That's what they were designed for.

Bella Center, Copenhagen

 

the new Ruutu vase from iittala

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Ruutu, the new range of glass vases from the Finnish company iittala were designed by brothers Ronan and Erwan Bourouille who are based in Paris.

They have a distinct and very elegant profile with four vertical sides but not set to form a cube with a square or rectangular base because, when seen from above, the four sides form a narrow or compressed diamond but with tight rounded rather than sharp-angles. 

Each vase is hand blown but using a metal mould to control the shape and to give a production run consistency.

By blowing the glass, the thickness of the sides can be graded - with the glass at the long outer corners very thin but then thickening gradually towards the corners that are on the short axis. So, although the sides are straight and consistent in thickness vertically, this change in thickness towards the centre along each side, within the glass, and a heavy gathering of glass across the base gives the vases not only a surprising weight but also, and more important, the gradual change in thickness modulates the way light passes through the vase or is reflected to give the glass an incredible depth and richness. 

There are plain version of the vase in clear glass but they come in a carefully-chosen range of colours with a deep sand colour called desert, a moss green, a smokey grey, a copper, a deep red called cranberry and a lighter red called salmon pink.

Selecting colours with great care is a hallmark of glassware from iittala and, with their considerable experience and technical skill, they produce glass that is reliably consistent in colour year after year. In each range, such as the Kivi lights or the Kartio water glasses, colours are produced that can happily be mixed together but then, over the years, iittala also cleverly introduce new colours into a range to keep the product alive and in demand … so designs can be not only familiar and dependable, retaining customers, but can also, with a distinct new colour, be fresh and fashionable to follow or to set new trends in table settings. 

In their shape the Ruutu vases may seem deceptively simple but it is clear that a phenomenal amount of thought and care has been taken over proportions not only for each vase but also for the relationship between the different sizes if vases are put together. The different heights and sizes can be used on their own, on a shelf or low table for instance, but they are also designed to be set in multiples and would make a dramatic centrepiece for a dining table … with a group either all in one colour or in one size or carefully mixed.

Copenhagen Crafts Fair

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The annual Kunsthåndvækermarkedet, or Crafts Fair, was held just over a week ago on Frue Plads in Copenhagen - that is the large long open space on the east side of Nørregade with, on one side, the north front of Vor Fruhe Kirke ... the cathedral of Copenhagen ... and on the other side,  the main building of the university. 

The fair is organised by Danske Kunsthåndværkere (the Danish Craft Association) and this year it was open over three days with over 130 stalls displaying work by ceramicists, textile designers and carpet weavers, glass makers, and jewellers. Many of the exhibitors were from Copenhagen but exhibitors had come from all over Denmark and there was a goldsmith and a ceramic artist from Malmö and seven makers from Iceland. 

Representing education and training in the crafts of ceramics and glass in Denmark there was a large display from the the Danmarks Designskole on the Baltic island of Bornholm - since 2011 a department of the Danish design school of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.

The work of Anne Rolsted of Regstrup

The works displayed ranged from modestly-priced pieces, that are meant to be used daily, to expensive and unique works that were aimed at serious collectors; the range of styles and the quality of the work and the very large number of visitors to the fair showed clearly that the work of craft designers and makers in Denmark has strong support.

The basket maker Anne Mette Hjørnholm from Hjerm

Two prizes were awarded - the jury awarded the prize for the best new unique work to the jewellery designer Helle Bjerrum and the prize for best new product to Sally Xenia Christensen for her “beautiful and simple” drinking glasses.

What was interesting, above all, for me was to see how many exhibiting their work here have the same problems as product designers working in the furniture and ceramic and glass industries. That is not surprising because, clearly, there are no obvious demarcation lines: someone who produces a single piece and signs it is usually defined as an artist or, if working in wood or silver or clay, a craftsman; make ten or twenty similar pieces and you are a maker and presumably 100 or a 1,000 makes you a designer and thousands and thousands of identical pieces defines you as a product designer.

Also, of course, many crafts people had a formal training in design and then chose the freedom and independence of opening a workshop and many if not all “commercial” designers take as their starting point the knowledge and experience they gained in their training working directly with wood or wool or linen or silver or clay or glass to produce one-off pieces to understand completely the materials they are working with and to understand what can or cannot be done with those materials.

The divisions and definitions do not seem, to me, to be clearly defined or, come to that, strictly relevant. I spoke with a number of the makers or craftsmen at the fair and over the coming year I hope to profile a number of craft designers and craft galleries … to visit them to explore their attitudes, find out about their training or background and discuss the starting point and development of their work and their problems marketing and selling craft pieces.

we don't do it like that here .... getting the Iittala habit

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Finnish friends have told me that, when they are about 15 years old, girls in Finland choose a style of china, usually from Arabia or Iittala, and decide on a colour or a pattern and make this known to family and friends.

Then, at events like birthdays, achieving good exam results or whatever, everyone knows what to buy as a present … some plates or cups in the chosen design. Steadily and regularly the collection grows.

Of course the idea is not new … this is a modern survival of the wedding dowry or trousseau … what was called in England in the 1950s and 1960s putting something away in the bottom drawer. From aristocratic families in Italy in the 14th or 15th century to prudent middle class families in Victorian England to the glory box in Australia, the idea was basically the same …. to give young women the best possible start in the expensive business of setting up the first home of their own.

Presumably, this Finnish variation involves more friends and over a longer period and carries with it an interesting message for manufactures … that quality of design and continuity, over and above novelty, are really important and that loyalty to brand or design is possible for long-term marketing. This doesn't thwart new designs or stop innovation: it just means that sometimes step changes should be considered - a new colour that compliments an established range or a new pattern on an existing shape - and of course it means maintaining production and stock over a reasonable period - so no change just for the sake of change. 

OK not very romantic but incredibly practical … in those early and expensive days of setting up a new home you can have good, well-made china on the table that reminds you of your friends and family but is also, crucially, what you like, what you chose and what you want. Quite a bit better than five toast racks on the wedding day and quite a bit fairer if you delay marriage or never marry. 

The odd thing was that no one talked about what Finnish boys get.

 

Kivi

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As an alternative to candles and candlesticks, there are the Kivi glass night lights from Iittala that were designed by Heikki Orvola in 1988. They come in a wide range of colours to reflect any scheme or any mood and new colours are introduced to the collection every year. Shown here are the lights in apple green, votive red and frosted clear glass.

H Skjalm P

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Close to Le Klint, on the east side of the square dominated by the church of St Nicholas, at 9 Nikolaj Plads is H Skjalm P. This amazing shop will be 60 years old at the end of this year and is still run by the widow of the founder Hagbarth Skjalm Petersen.

The shop has a narrow frontage to the square and just inside the door there are steps up to the raised ground floor and steps down to the basement. The lower level is like an Aladdin's Cave of kitchen equipment with racks and drawers and shelves full of anything and everything you might need for cooking and a lot of things you had no idea you needed until you saw them here, or rather, you want them even if you are not quite sure what they are for. 

The upper floor has displays of linens and fabrics in an almost unbelievable range of colours. They have a remarkably good and very sophisticated web site but even that cannot replicate or do justice to actually visiting the shop. Last time I was there “just looking” I came away with 6 tea towels I didn’t know I needed and four drawer knobs that I’m sure I’ll find a use for sometime.

investing in good design

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By investing in good design I don’t mean buying an outstanding piece of furniture that might make a fortune at an auction in the future but buying something that is beautifully designed and that is well made and is a pleasure to use.

When I was a student and living in a shared house I invited my tutor and his wife round for supper. Although there were glasses in the cupboard in the kitchen they were all different and all pretty grim - either donated by parents and obviously dug out of the attic as “good enough to do a turn” or they were glasses with odd logos on them and had been “borrowed” from one of the local pubs.

I went out and bought a set of plain glass tumblers from the recently-opened Habitat store. Forty years on I still have those tumblers; still use them every day at breakfast for juice and at supper for water. I still enjoy using them and I still think the design cannot be bettered. 

It was some years later that I found out those tumblers were designed by Kaj Franck in 1958 and that they are still made by the Finnish company Iittala. Occasionally Iittala adds a new colour to the range but the form and the quality of the glasses is the same.

So that’s what I mean by investing in good design. Buy something that you like - something that not only looks good now but will not look dated next year; buy something that is well made and does what it is meant to do and does it well. Those are key qualities that mean that a piece of furniture or an item of tableware can become a design classic.

Maybe one day my tumblers will end up in a recycle bottle bank but they’ve served me well for forty years so they probably have a place and a use for a few more years to come.

design classic: Lederhosen of an Eskimo Woman

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First produced in 1936, this glass vase was designed by Alvar Aalto inspired by the traditional costume of Sami women. Initially it was called Eskimåkvinnans Skinnbyxa but was subsequently renamed the Savoy vase after the luxury restaurant that opened in Helsinki in 1937.

The shape was created by blowing molten glass into a ring of irregularly spaced wooden sticks to create wave like and slightly sloping sides but as production increased first wooden and then later steel moulds were used. The vase was displayed at the World Trade Fair in Paris in 1937 and I believe it has been in continuous production since that year. The first vases were 140mm high but smaller versions are now produced by Iittala. Nord has one of the large vases, attracting much attention, in the window display, and a selection of smaller vases in clear, coloured and opaque white glass, sometimes called milk glass.