notes, reviews and photographs about current design, design shops, cafes and restaurants and exhibitions and galleries in Copenhagen
news, notes, photographs and thoughts about design, architecture, planning and townscape and exhibitions in Copenhagen
Next week … on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, the 10th, 11th and 12th August … the annual craft market will be on Frue Plads with works from more than a hundred professional designers and makers who are members of Danske Kunsthåndværkere & Designere … the Danish association of artisans and designers.
Frue Plads is the square alongside Vor Frue Kirke - the square alongside the cathedral in Copenhagen.
Following the closure of their gallery and showroom on Kløvermarksvej in January, Anders Petersen has opened a new workshop and show room and on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 22, 23 and 24 of June, they opened the doors there to friends and old customers to celebrate.
Their large, high industrial unit - with an upper gallery around three sides - gives them space to show their collection of furniture but there is also a work-shop area where they will make some of the pieces in the collection and where they can develop new designs to take them through to production stage.
Again, the new building is on the east side of Kløvermarken but 140 metres further to the south.
note: the showroom is open now by appointment.
A. Petersen
Reffinaderivej 20K (hal K2)
DK 2300, Copenhagen S
email: contact@apetersen.dk
Today was the first of the three days of the craft and design market on Frue Plads in Copenhagen …. the square on the north side of the cathedral.
It is an annual event of K&D … Danske Kunsthåndværkere & Designere … the association of art crafts makers and designers. This year there are 110 artists and designers showing their work. All are members of the association.
Dansk Kunsthåndværkere & Designere Markerd 2022
exhibitors for 2022 with background information and links
Thursday 11 August, 12 - 19
Friday 12 August, 10 - 19
Saturday 13 August, 10 - 16
Until Sunday 10th April, Thea Dam Søby is showing her textiles and demonstrating sewing and repair techniques at the Danish flagship store of MUJI on the 4th floor of the Illum department store in Østergade in Copenhagen. Given how much she has been inspired by Japanese techniques for working with textiles it has been an appropriate venue.
Many of the works shown - both clothing and high-quality household textiles - have been given a second life by using various techniques of tie dye and resist die and by beautiful repairs that become part of the story of the piece.
Thea has demonstrated some of the sewing and patching methods for classes held in the store and for that work she sells amazing Japanese needles - the best in the world - and kits with sewing needles and thread.
We talked about this for some time. My mother and both my grandmothers sewed and knitted. They made curtains - not out of necessity but to get exactly what they wanted - and both grandmothers repaired and darned. All three - my mother and both grandmothers - had drawers or boxes or large bags full of thread and offcuts of material and buttons and patches. Anything and everything was kept in case it could be useful because that was what most women of their age did.
Now, Thea cannot assume that women who come to her classes have needles at home or even a grasp of basic skills.
On Thea's Instagram site there are photographs of a re-dyed white-denim jacket she produced for a fashion journalist ... and I then realised that I had completely forgotten that there was a period when people wore white or faded denim .... jacket, trousers and shirts ... the whole works.
I'm not convinced that I could get away with wearing one of Thea's kimono-style jackets but the household textiles are amazing. The strong colours - mostly deep blue but also some mauve - are striking and where they are applied to antique linens the textures and the patterns of the weaving are incredible and they have a feel and a quality that is rarely matched by modern textiles.
Maker’s Dimensions shows final projects by fifteen students who graduated this summer from the Royal Academy Crafts schools for glass and ceramics on the island of Bornholm.
Studying at the academy, gives students time, facilities and support to not only develop their technical skills but also an opportunity to experiment - to take ideas in new directions or to find a balance between technical methods and the intrinsic or potential qualities of the materials they are working with - and time to discover and develop a distinct and appropriate personal style.
What can be seen here are the works of young designer-makers who are exploring colour and texture, experimenting with pure forms or using pattern and repetition and testing the qualities of and potential limits of glass and clay.
Works in the exhibition are by:
Annamaria Margareth Hartvig-Clausen, Armel Desrues, Clara Rudbeck Toksvig, Hanna Torvik, In Kyong Lee, Jasmin Franko, Josephine Alberthe Molter, Laura Godsk Vestergaard, Maren Gammelgaard Aaserud, Maria Kildahl Mathiasen, Nathalie Cohn, Sara Vinderslev Mirkhani, Signe Boisen, Thea Dejligbjerg Djurhuus, and Tiphanie Germaneau
Maker's Dimension
26 November 2021 to 9 January 2022
Bygning A, Kløvermarksvej 70,
2300 København S
Det Kongelige Akademi på Bornholm
– Crafts in Glass and Ceramics
update:
Bygning A had to close on 19 December - because of legislation for the control of Coronavirus-19 - but they will reopen on Sunday 16 January 2022 and Maker’s Dimensions will now continue through to 30 January 2022
I didn’t get out to Cable Park until the very end of the third day of 3daysofdesign. That was not deliberate apart from the fact that I was trying to take a logical route from place to place to avoid doubling back or making long jumps across the city but there could not have been a better way of ending what was, by then, beginning to feel like a marathon run.
By a very long way, this was the most relaxed show of them all and - out on the edge of the sound - the light coming off the water was amazing.
The venue was the studio of the designer, illustrator and ‘paper poet’ Helle Vibeke Jensen and the works, by craftsmen and designers, were shown on the board walks and the hung on the walls of the wooden sheds and outbuildings of the water sports centre and were even shown wrapped around or draped over wakeboards.
Kids in wet suits were not phased and this showed an important aspect of Danish design …. here good design and an interest in art can be just a part of everyday life.
This is the second outing of COME AGAIN, and as with the exhibition at the Offcinet - the gallery of Danske Kunsthåndværker & Designere in Bredgade - this was curated by the jeweller Helen Clara Hemsley and Helle Vibeke Jensen.
Helle Vibeke Jensen
Helen Clara Hemsley
Copenhagen Cable Park
Kraftværksvej 24, 2300 København S
Exhibitors:
Helen Clara Hemsley, Janne K. Hansen and Mette Saabye with George William Bell, Katrine Borup, Rasmus Fenhann, Line Frank, Helle Vibeke Jensen, Lise Bjerre Schmidt, Lotte Myrthue, Martine Myrup, Anne Fabricius Møller, Annelie Grimwade Olofsson, Camilla Prasch and Tina Ratzer.
Svend Bayer is Danish but spent much of his early life in Africa or at school in England.
After university he studied at the pottery of Michael Cardew at Wenford Bridge in Cornwall and then travelled widely in Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia to visit country potteries that produced large storage jars. He returned to England in 1975 and set up his studio at Sheepwash in North Devon.
His pottery is fired in a large wood-fired kiln.
On a visit to another pottery that had a wood-fired kiln, I chatted with the potter who had just had a firing and he wanted to apologise because something I had ordered would not be finished until the next firing. He had three apprentices so, when the kiln was loaded for a firing, it held pots by all four potters and from several months of work so the success or not of a firing was about the livelihood for four families. If a firing went badly then it was a disaster for four families. That tension but also the demands of the process itself meant that the kiln was packed with care and with the skill that comes with experience and the whole process had to be supervised through the days and the nights as the kiln was brought up to temperature and then as the kiln cooled before it was unloaded.
But even in the very best studios accidents happen and the web site for Svend Bayer has an account and photographs by Brigitte Colleaux about a firing disaster at the kiln at Kingbeare in April 2019.
Part of the character of finished pots is that ash, impurities in the clay or different effects of the heat on single pot because that heat varies in intensity across the kiln are all essential to both the quality and the character of ceramics from a wood-fired kiln but when there is a problem that can escalate into a disaster
What is so incredible - as you use ceramic tableware like this - is that you can see and feel the way that the potter worked the malleable clay to, for example, pull out and down and smooth into place with a thumb a handle, and then how that action, that requires the coordination of hand and eye and experience, is then fixed and can be seen by all after the pot is fired and for as long as that piece is still used and appreciated.
This work by Svend Bayer is studio pottery of the very highest quality and is the work of a master craftsman and yet it is also functional pottery that is made to be used and, in being used, the bowls and cups and jars enhance day-to-day life in a way that is difficult to measure or quantify.
The Japanese or Korean style jar with four small handles, shown here, sits on the side in my kitchen because it is the perfect size and height to hold all the spatulas and ladles and cooking spoons I need so that means it is used every day.
The small jar with a lid sits alongside the hob and holds cooking salt.
I swear that the bowls, shown here, when they are full of soup, really do make that soup taste better because the bowls make a simple meal of soup and fresh bread feel special.
And, surely, isn’t that what good craftsmanship and good design is really about?
Buying good ceramic tablewares is one simple way towards sustainability because it should be the antidote to our cavalier attitudes to consumerism … the swipe/like/buy/get bore/discard/buy something new world of this century.
These bowls and the casserole were not particularly cheap but nor were they horrendously expensive but, more than forty years after buying them, I still enjoy using them and, every time I use them, they really do make life feel better.
One of the first events of 3daysofdesign was this evening when Marcus Fairs - the founder and editor of the online design site DEZEEN -interviewed Niels Strøyer Christophersen of Frama.
The interview was live streamed at 5pm
After a short introduction to Frama the interview goes on to look at the philosophy behind this small but important design studio that was established in 2011 and then discussed the release of a new book from Frama - PERCEPTION FORM.
Frama produce distinct furniture and objects for the home including lighting, glassware and ceramics, and they have one of the most stylish ‘eateries’ in the city. Their work has a distinct and coherent design aesthetic where they explore form and re examine function but, above all, their designs, although not minimalist as such, keep the working and manipulation of the material to a minimum to retain and show inherent qualities.
Niels talks here about holistic experiences and about welcoming space and about trying to recapture some of the curiosity and imagination of a child collecting found objects that are then imbued with specific and very personal value. He confesses to being a hoarder … but it is clearly not of objects of high cost but objects where their shape and form or colour and texture fit within what appears, initially, to be his spartan or almost monastic sense of style.
Frama makes an exceptionally valuable contribution to our debate about what we own and what we want and what we need in our day to day life.
Apotek 57 at Frama
Frama Permanent Collection
FRAMA
Fredericiagade 57,
1310 Copenhagen
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 design store Hay is at the east end of Amagertorv and has it’s showrooms up on the second and third floor and the last time I was in there I looked out and realised that the light over the roof scape, looking towards Christiansborg, was good and, as always, if you have a camera, why miss an opportunity?
Copenhagen has the most incredible roof scape and up here, on a level with the gutters, you can see that architects and craftsmen spent effort and money on dormers and gables and entablatures that people can barely see from the ground.
This is not a great city for ornate chimney pots but then you can’t have everything.
With the necessary government policies to contain the spread of Covid-19, galleries, museums and exhibitions throughout Copenhagen and the Capital Region have been closed but now events further ahead in the summer have been cancelled.
The most recent is the annual craft fair of the Danish Association of Craftsmen and Designers that was to have been held on Frue Plads, beside the cathedral, in August.
Professional designers and artists, who planned to show their work here, depend on the high profile of this event and the income from sales over the three days so, for them, this will be devastating.
Danske Kunsthåndvækere & Designere
Designed by Kaare Klint, this is a simple but starkly beautiful monument to unknown prisoners who died in German concentration camps.
It stands in the churchyard of Helligaandskirken - the Church of the Holy Spirit. Now set just to the side of the main path from the gate on Strøget to the south door f the church, it was unveiled on 4th May 1950 to mark the fifth anniversary of the Liberation of Denmark.
Cut in a soap stone from Finland - chosen because it resists oil and heat when a commemorative flame is lit in the bowl - it takes the form of a Roman brazier with a hemispherical bowl raised on a stone base, in a form inspired by antique tripods, with a support tapered down to a base that is narrower than the upper part under the bowl. The three sides are hollowed into a shallow concave and the stones, precisely graded in height, largest at the top, sit on a circular plinth with a gently-curved convex top that echoes or mirrors the relationship of the base to the bowl and seems to show cupping or holding the bowl rather than simply supporting it by crudely butting the parts together.
Around the rim of the bowl is cut a text from Aftenlandet that was written in 1950 by the Danish poet Halfdan Rasmussen.
MUSELMAND UKENDTE HIOB
ASKE I EN ASKEHOB
LEGIONERS SOEG OG VE
SOVER I DIN ASKES SNE
MENNESKE UKENDTE VEN
GIV OS MENNESKET IGEN
Mussulman, unknown Job,
Ashes in an ash heap.
Legion's grief and woe,
Sleep in your ashes snow.
Man, nameless friend,
Give us man again.
Kaare Klint is now known primarily as a furniture designer, teacher and architect but he was also a skilled artist, draughtsman and typographer.
Optur - the current exhibition at the Anders Petersen Gallery in Copenhagen - shows the work of both the furniture maker Teis Dich Abrahamsen and his sister, the artist Louise Dich Abrahamsen, but, of course, with the crisis of coronavirus, the gallery has not been open.
The exhibition was due to end today - the 29th March - but the gallery has just sent out an email newsletter and has updated their online site to say that it has been agreed with the artists that, once restrictions are lifted and the gallery reopens, the exhibition can continue until 2nd August.
It’s an exhibition about the creative process and the inspiration for art and about the skill and ingenuity of a master craftsman. These amazing structures explore movement through incredibly complicated spaces that are part maze, part toy, part wunderkammer or cabinet of curiosities but with a stripped-down Danish aesthetic and a fascination with different timbers.
The works are mesmerising and this could hardly be a better antidote to the stress from the shutdown when the city reopens.
This is the last opportunity to see Porcelain Plus at Officinet - the gallery of Danske Kunsthåndværkere og Designere in Bredgade in Copenhagen - as the exhibition closes tomorrow 29 February 2020.
Porcelain Plus has been curated by Bettina Køppe of the gallery Køppe Contemporary Objects in Nexø on Bornholm.
Here are shown works by three major Scandinavian ceramic artists with all three working in porcelain and all three artists use slip pouring or casting.
All three show how their works have evolved as they explore specific ideas or a number of themes but also, through the development of their skills and their specific techniques, they explore the qualities of their chosen material to discover what is possible and what is not possible as they exploit what is essential about the qualities of porcelain.
But here, with the current works of the three artists, their pieces could hardly be more different.
Porcelain Plus at Officinet -
the gallery of Danske Kunsthåndværkere og Designere
in Bredgade in Copenhagen -
opened on 7 February 2020 and continues until 29 February.
Officinet, Danske Kunsthåndvækere & Designere
Køppe Contemporary Objects
Mia Göransson
Still Life, 2017
Bodil Manz
Dessau ll, 2019
Irene Nordli
Opløst Venus, 2020
A joint exhibition with the work of the artist and designer Leise Dich Abrahamsen and her brother the cabinetmaker and conservator Teis Dich Abrahamsen.
the exhibition continues
at A Petersen Collection & Craft
until 29 March 2020
The Cabinetmakers' Autumn Exhibition has just opened in the Golden Gallery at
the Danish Architecture Center in Copenhagen.
first photographs and basic information about the works
the exhibition opened on 8 November 2019 and continues until 3 May 2020
Danish Architecture Center, Bryghuspladsen 10, 1473 Copenhagen
S.E. Snedkernes Efterårsudstilling 2019
Marlene Klok studied fashion at Design School Kolding and is on the board of the Danish textile group KONTEMPO.
These new works, sculptures in papier-mâché, seem to reference folk art but the pieces show a darker sense of humour with a strong element of fantasy.
The exhibition is certainly an antidote if you are tired of Danish minimalism.
Marlene Klok
Interior Monologues continues until 1 December 2019
at the gallery of Danske Kunsthåndværkere & Designere
Officinet, Bredgade 66, Copenhagen K
8 November 2019 - 3 May 2020
The annual Cabinetmakers' Autumn exhibition has just opened at BLOX in the Golden Gallery of the Danish Architecture Centre.
There are thirty-five works by cabinetmakers, some who have both designed and made the furniture but most are a collaboration between cabinetmakers and designers or architects working together. Each year the furniture reflects a theme and this year the focus is on climate change and sustainability so there are experiments with new materials; designs that reassess how established materials are used and could be re-used and there are designs that focus on reworking ideas to make them relevant to the way we have to live now and how we may live in the near future.
These works are about makers understanding their chosen material to explore ideas and explore limits and potential but also about producing beautiful and simple furniture of the very highest quality. After all, for most people the easiest form of sustainability is to buy something we need but that then we don't want to throw away.
The furniture is shown on a framework of scaffolding that can itself be reused after the exhibition is dismantled.
review to follow
Snedkernes Efterårsudstilling
Danish Architecture Center
designed by Monique Engelund and Mathilde Witt Mølholm
produced by Anton Balle A/S
designed by Jonas Herman Pedersen
produced by Holstebro Kartonnage
designed by Cecilie Manz
produced by TAKT
Designmuseum Danmark has just opened a new display in one of the large side galleries with 70 ceramic vessels from their own collection and described simply as large pots.
They vary in period and in country of origin but most are by Danish potters and artists and most are from the late 19th century onwards although there are also older ceramic vessels from Japan, Korea and China and work from Spain, France and England … all countries with strong but distinct ceramic traditions.
Some of the pieces are clearly storage jars - so utilitarian - but there are also sophisticated decorative vessels and some fine studio pottery.
The size of some of these pots is amazing and the selection of ceramics shown here provides an amazing opportunity to see how the technical skill of the potter; the form or shape of the pot; the choice of smooth, perfect and highly finished surfaces or the decision to leave a more natural finish determined by the character of the clay and the use or not of decoration, incised or in relief; the types of glaze; any use of texture or a preference for a smooth finish or high shine or matt surface and of course the final colour or colours produce works of incredibly diverse styles.
Three ships of De Forenede Sejlskibe - United Sailing Ships - are berthed at the quay across the front of the large brick warehouses that wa built as grain stores in the 1780s but is now the Admiral Hotel.
The schooners are the freighters Mira built in 1898 and Halmø from 1900 - both from the shipyards of Rasmus Møller in Faaborg - and the training ship Lilla Dan built in Svendborg in 1951.
In talking about modern design in posts here, much is made of functionality, materials, technology and quality of production but of course these are hardly new concepts. Generally Functionalism describes a style of architecture and design from the early decades of the last century but describing something as functional can now be almost pejorative - implying it’s something slightly basic that works - anything from an orange squeezer to a stripped down and basic kitchen - almost as if buying something that actually works properly is surprising and might even be worth using as a sale pitch.
But in the design and construction of these ships, functionalism and well-crafted and hard-wearing fittings were not primarily about aesthetics but rather a matter of life and death and profit … the parts, and therefore the ship as a whole, had to be robust and, to be efficient and, generally, had to be managed by the smallest number of crew possible. That they are also strikingly beautiful is a bonus that reflects the skill of the craftsmen and the quality of the materials they used.
If you want to trace through how the specific qualities of materials along with craft or manufacturing skills focused on function for the starting point that determines form of a design and how function and form and materials and techniques for working those materials are a framework or control for the design and all working together then a good place to start is to look carefully at an old water mill or a windmill or an early steam engine or, as here, at hand-built sailing ships. Not just at the separate parts but at how the whole functioned.
The harbour has become more and more sanitised and being given the opportunity to see working ships should remind people that the bustle and noise of goods being loaded and unloaded on these wharfs and dock basins was the reason that the city is here and that was the source of its wealth and significance.
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