Skud på stammen at the Design Werck gallery

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Bord dæk dig - en eventyrlig historie / Table deck yourself - an adventure from fairy tales

An exhibition of furniture with tables and chairs by young cabinetmakers from Snedkernes Uddannelser and with lighting by students from the glass school of EUC Nordvestsjælland in Holbæk.

All the designs were inspired by traditional fairy tales.

The title of the exhibition - Bord dæk dig or Table Set Yourself - is from a story by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm about three brothers who are sent off to make their fortunes as apprentices and about the gifts they are given by their masters when they finish their training …. so more than appropriate for the theme for an exhibition by young furniture makers.

In the tale, one of the young apprentices is given a table by his master that, on command, sets or lays itself with a magic feast. The table was carried on the back of the apprentice so the table here is on a version of trestles and the top is made from many layers of veneer that must symbolise potential new layers as the table 'sets itself'.

The inspiration for the other tables were four tales from Hans Christian Andersen …...

Thumbelina was a girl who was so small that she was carried off by a toad and captured by a beetle but escaped on the back of a swallow and that tale inspired a table shaped like a beetle that is supported on insect-like legs and with chairs like giant insect or butterfly wings.

The Top and the Ball, also by Hans Christian Andersen, is a tale of love and loss and rejection and the complicated inlay of the top reflects the pattern of a satin ball that became lost and faded.

The Little Match Girl was caught out in a snow storm, and struck three of her matches for light and warmth and this has inspired the brilliant legs of the small tables with tops like match boxes with three of the four legs like used and burnt matches and the fourth match unused.

Klods-Hans …. Hans the Blockhead - seems to me to be a rather more obscure story that is less easy to interpret. it is the tale of three brothers, two of whom are sent off on horseback by their father to win the hand of the princess with fine wit and fine words and the blockhead son follows behind on a goat and collects on the way a dead bird and rank rubbish as gifts for the princess. The chairs are inspired by the goat but the table with its staggered ends and sliding extension leaves? …. is this the crenellations of the royal castle?

This is an exhibition about the imagination of the designers whose inventions are realised by cabinetmakers with the technical skills required to produce furniture of this quality.

 

Photographs for the catalogue were taken at the fairy-tale castle of Jægerspris Slot on Sjælland.

 


note:
I think that Skud på stammen can be translated as shoot or bud on the stem or tree trunk. It’s like the English phrase about mighty oaks that from little acorns grow but implies new growth or the new branch on the tree rather than a completely new tree so the relationship between the apprentice and the master.

Design Werck as a venue for the exhibition was planned for the Spring but it had to be postponed because of the lockdown.

Actually, it is a great show for this time of year, in the build up to Christmas, in part because of the fairy tale theme but also because the Christmas season is when, for Danes, the dining table and food becomes such an important part of celebrations with friends and family.

more photographs of the furniture and lights 

the exhibition opened on 6 November 2020
at Design Werck, Krudløbsvej 12, 1439 København
Design Werck
NEXT Uddannelse

note: Design Werck does not open on Mondays or Tuesdays

 

the Tomorrow Collective

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ECCO CARRYING - Jingyi Zhang / TERRA urban root cellar - Ida Gudrunsdotter / YOYO BASKET - Nan Jiang

 

 

This is an exhibition by students from the Master’s Programme at the School of Industrial Design in Lund and is a collection of items, all well made, that question and challenge the assumption that any domestic chore must now be done by something plastic with a chip and a plug. And what is also clear here is that there is a sense of pride in the process of making ... so what is common to all the pieces is that they are made from natural materials using traditional craft skills.

It is a  brilliant and inspiring exhibition and even more important because it comes from industrial designers … or better still the next generation of industrial designers.

In part the designs take us back to the household items that you can see in the old town houses in the open-air museum in Lund or domestic items from the past that are displayed in the Danish open-air museums in Aarhus and at Frilandsmuseet north of Copenhagen but those items tend to be from old rural crafts and there is, in part, a sense there of people making do and making themselves what was not available to buy but all these items here in the exhibition could be produced commercially.

This is not nostalgia ... not a sort of romantic revivalist view of a cosy kitchen from our grandparents' past.

These designers have taken a very serious and realistic look at what we do and how and what we make and what we throw away. Sometimes it is useful and sometimes actually necessary to look at where we are, wonder if it is the right place and maybe go back down the road to a cross roads and explore if another road might be more interesting.

 

 

 

Basically they are saying take a step back and look at what you do and why and how and possibly, with ingenuity, sustainability can be very stylish and actually fun.

But they also make a very serious point …. “In a time when the single person is becoming more and more distanced from where things come from, how they are made, what they are made of and where they inevitably end up, it becomes increasingly harder to see the consequences of our lifestyles and choices. We depend on fossil fuel driven transportation systems, monocultural large-scale farming and non renewable, toxic energy sources. Our economies thrive on productivity and consumption and we live like there’s no tomorrow. The Tomorrow Collective is about exploring ways of enabling us to live a sustainable life in the future. Inspired by past knowledge of how to grow, make and be, the project presents concepts for modern tools and systems that can be used in a cyclic sense, within private homes or to share in smaller communities.”

 

M FOR MILK within one's reach - Judith Glaser

 

THE BURKS - Oskar Olsson

 

 

LITTLE THUMB save the crumbs - Elena Biondi

 

 

WOODEN IRON simple clothing care tool - Ausrine Augustinaite

 

FLAVOUR OF TIME preserve the unique feeling of daily food and seasonal flavour - Reo Letian Zhang

 

MICU smart choice for a healthy conscience - Andrea Müller

 

THE TOOTHPASTER nice and simple - Olof Janson

 

SHAVING KIT long lasting shaving tools inspired by the past & the present - Philip Andersson

 
 

Even now, electric gadgets with smart technology do not rule our homes completely … many people still have wooden spoons in the kitchen or one of those wooden lemon juicers and lots of cooks use a pestle and mortar to grind their own herbs but one of the points made here is that often a specific contraption for a specific task might be used once or twice and then confined to the back of a cupboard. Could there be a simpler way of doing some things? Is the purchase of a clever-clever time-saving devise our real priority? Whatever the cost in terms of the energy and the materials consumed? In that profit and loss account is a little time gained worth the loss from the satisfaction of doing something ourselves?

After looking at the exhibition I remembered that when I cleared my mother’s house, after she died a couple of years ago, I came across a butter knife that I had used at my grandparent’s house when I was a small child and some brushes my grandfather kept in his own drawer in the kitchen for when he came in from the garden and wanted to wash and they still smelt of the specific soap and and the tooth powder he always used … he was a late and reluctant convert to toothpaste. Memories suddenly came flooding back. If we chuck out and replace everything because it all has a short shelf life and the replacement is cheap, is it not just sustainability we should worry about but also the loss of our own sense of time and place?

There is a full catalogue of all the pieces on line with photographs and links to all the designers

THE TOMORROW COLLECTIVE

the exhibition continues at Form Design Center, Malmö until 30 August 2015