Svend Bayer studio pottery

/
 

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.

Svend Bayer

 

this month Torvehallerne is celebrating its tenth anniversary

/

This month Torvehallerne - the food halls a block away from Nørreport station - celebrate their tenth anniversary.

This large public space - with a main road in and out of the city on one side, large apartment buildings on the two long sides and with an amazing public park across the the fourth side in what appears to be a steep valley - was all laid out in the late 19th century after the old defences and the old gates to the city were dismantled. The square is just beyond the site of the north gate of the city on land that was until then steeply sloping earthworks of ramparts and ditches that all had to levelled.

From 1889 onwards the square was the site of a large vegetable and fruit market, Grønttorvet, that served the rapidly growing population.

The market was moved out to Valby, to a new wholesale market, and by the 1960s the square had become a dirt-covered car park. There were occasional events here. I remember coming to a book fair on the square before the food halls appeared .... I can't remember if I bought any books but do still remember the state of my shoes covered in thick dust.

In 1997, the architect Hans Peter Hagens, wrote an article in Politiken where he proposed the construction of covered food halls on the square in the part between Vendersgade - the road across the centre of the space - and the main street, Frederiksborggade, across the short north side.

A company was established to build and run the halls but with the financial crash of 2007/2008 they were forced into bankruptcy and the project was taken over by the property company Jeudan and the food halls opened in September 2011.

 
Israels Plads 1.jpeg

The two market halls are set parallel, about 23 metres / 75ft apart with an area of open vegetable and flower market between them. The halls are 50 metres / 165ft long and 24.2 / 80ft wide and they are set back by about 26 metres from Frederiksborggade so there is space for a square at the front that is used for small stalls and for events like special food fairs or for tables and seating.

Each hall has a wide centre aisle and narrow outer aisles against the outer glazed walls and there are cross aisles forming blocks of four stalls set back to back and they face either the centre aisle and a cross aisle or the outer aisle and a cross aisle.

The construction is simple, spacious and well lit with a glazed and raised top louvre that brings light into the centre and with large window panels on the sides that slide open so space and people flow smoothly from inside to outside and back.

There are a number of reasons why the food halls have been so successful from the obvious - there is a separate entrance from and into the metro at the corner of the market - to the much more complicated and subtle. The halls are set slightly in from the side streets of Rømergade and Linnésgade so there is space for parking for unloading and space for leaving bikes on either side so separate from the main public areas. The main road across the short north side is one of the busiest routes for commuters on bikes to come into the city from the north, from Nørrebro, and, of course, to head out home from work. Many in the city buy food daily so this is a good place to stop to buy the evening meal on the way home and there are also food stalls and bars within the market which is open until late so it is a good place to stop to meet up with friends.

The trade here has attracted other food shops, bars and stores to move into premises in nearby streets and there are good popular destinations like the Botanic Gardens and the Worker's Museum so, again, that draws in a large number of people who also want good food as part of their day out.

In 2014, the other half of the public space, now known as Israels Plads, was redesigned by the Copenhagen design studio Cobe with car parking moved underground, to create a large pedestrian area with sports courts, seating areas, water features and steps down to connect it to the park so this is now one of the most popular and most used open areas in the city.

Israels Plads

Jeudan
TorvehallerneKBH

 
 

Censuum … a new design store on Nørre Farimagsgade

/
 

A new design store has opened on Nørre Farimagsgade - close to Israels Plads and the food halls of Torvehallerne but a block away towards the lakes.

It is an interesting space in what looks, from the outside, like a relatively familiar style of large Copenhagen apartment building from the late 19th century. It looks as if it will have relatively low spaces in a half basement just down from the street level that would have been either for commercial use or simply services and store rooms for the apartments above. In fact the interior is much more interesting and much more dramatic because the space that runs across the whole of the half basement was previously a printing house with large areas that were double height.

There are relatively small windows along the street frontage that are at pavement level with an entrance door, at one end of the front, with steps down into a low space that is now an area for a coffee and a food outlet but then there are steps that go on down to the rest of the space along the front that has high ceilings so there is good natural light and interesting spaces.

Here, within the retail area of about 500 square metres, there are products from 40 small independent companies who are generally at that intermediate stage between selling on line or at design fairs and markets but before they expand to open a dedicated shop of their own.

Here you can find a good range of clothing, beauty products, jewellery, linens and items for the home. In terms of style, the range of products here reminds me of what can be found in the FindersKeepers design markets. Note …. that’s praise and not veiled criticism - the FindersKeepers markets are great but are only held once or twice a year.

Censuum describe themselves as a new form of department store because they focus on products that are responsible, sustainable, and climate friendly and they work with brands who can show that they are socially conscientious.

The cafe is good, serving coffee from the specialist roaster Prolog - now in the Meatpacking District - as well as craft beers and bread from the Andersen Bakery so they are setting their level high. There are tables and chairs inside and small tables and chairs set up along the pavement. 

Censuum, Nørre Farimagsgade 47, 1364 København

 

Ildpot by Grethe Meyer from FDB Møbler

/

FDB Møbler have just relaunched the Ildpot range of ceramics that were first produced and sold by the company in 1976.

The designer Grethe Meyer (1918-2008) had trained at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and graduated in 1947 - the only woman to graduate that year. She became a leading furniture and industrial designer who, from 1960, ran her own design studio.

The Ildpot or Firepot range is not made using ordinary clay but this is "cordierite ceramic, a magnesium aluminium".

That is in quotation marks because I am not a potter so I just had to copy the description from the FDB web site but I know enough to know that the "silicate" part indicates a clay body that is fired at a high temperature and is like a stoneware or even a heavyweight porcelain. The surface, although matt, is vitrified so, like glass, it will not absorb food, does not need a glaze and second firing and is tough enough for bowls and dishes and pans to be taken straight from the freezer and put in the oven and can then be taken straight from the hot oven to the table for the food to be served.

In the 1930s, Danish furniture designers were still producing large and expensive cabinets for storing a full dinner service and, in many houses, both the cabinet and its fine china would have been in the dining room. China, glassware and cutlery would have been taken from the cabinet to set the table and then returned to the cabinet after the meal and after it had been washed in the scullery or in the kitchen. In the kitchen, in any respectable house, food would have been transferred from pans and roasting tins to serving dishes for the table.

From the 1950s onwards, more and more women with families were working and, for this new age and for a very different lifestyle, the Ildpot range was designed for food that could either be prepared ahead and chilled or frozen or meals could be produced quickly after a day at work and then, after cooking, could be taken straight to the table. It was the age of casseroles and pan roasted meat and vegetables.

The Ildpot bowls and dishes have bold rims and straight sides so are simple shapes that are easy to pick up when they hot and easier to wash and the collection was designed to stack, to take up as little space as possible, and, almost certainly, that suggests it would have been kept in a cupboard in the kitchen rather than in the dining room.

Of course, this was also the period when new kitchens, even in small apartments, were designed to take a small table with compact chairs so it was a period when even middle-class families would eat in the kitchen and only used their dining room, if there was one, for weekends or for more important family meals.

It is fascinating that this oven-to-table ware is evidence for some major change in eating habits - the move from formal and traditional dishes to meals for busy families that were easy to prepare and easy to serve.

Over the forty years or more since the Ildpot range was designed, meals - the food eaten and the dishes cooked - have changed - partly with fashion; partly with more people travelling and returning home with some adventurous new ideas to try at home; partly with new ingredients with some foods available through a longer season or even year-round and with more and more people buying ready-prepared meals that are simply reheated in the oven or the microwave.

But maybe FDB have realised that there may be more changes on the way. If lockdown returns this winter; we may well have more time at home and it’s possible we will turn back to more substantial and more traditional food for comfort.

When the Ildpot ceramics came out, Søren Gericke, then a young chef, created some suitable recipes and, with this relaunch, he has produced 16 new dishes that are published on the FDB site.

His recipe for rabbit made me think about how much what we eat has changed.

When I was very small, my grandparents still had chickens in their garden, in a hen house that my grandfather built at the beginning of the war so that they had their own eggs once rationing started. One of my very earliest memories, as a toddler, was going down their garden path to reach into the nesting box to collect eggs for my breakfast.

But then, thinking back, I remember that even well after the war ended, the chickens were too valuable to eat … so we had roast beef or roast lamb or roast pork at the weekend, huge joints of meat you would think twice about buying now because they are expensive, but we had chicken for important meals at Christmas or Easter and then it was treat. How things have changed.

Also, when I was small, we had rabbit most weeks, as a mid-week supper, because it was so cheap. I had forgotten that but now can't actually remember the last time I had rabbit stew.

FDB Møbler

 
 

Frama for 3daysofdesign

/
 

 

FRAMA studio and store in St. Pauls Apotek in Fredericiagade was open on the first evening of 3daysofdesign with people moving out onto the pavement to enjoy the warm weather.

This was an opportunity to show new additions to the collection - so a selection of cutlery in the ICHI range from Ole Palsby, now sold in the store, and a new tie in with home goods from the Japanese brand Ouur.

FRAMA

 

 
 

ARKET

/
 

 

Part of Sunday afternoon was spent looking at the new ARKET store in the old post office building in Købmagergade in Copenhagen so it really was a bit of a fashion day with the time looking at the photographs from Danske magazine on Højbro Plads.

ARKET -  a new brand from the Swedish company H&M - opened at the beginning of September so just a week after their first store opened in Regent Street in London and ahead of Brussels and Munich.

One style magazine suggested the brand sits between & Other Stories and COS but I'm not sure exactly what that means although I could understand the point that the magazine went on to make that this is a brand for good-quality basics.

Over the last year or so in Copenhagen I have been to a couple of seminars or discussion sessions where some in the design world here have suggested that furniture and design companies could follow the example of the fashion industry by introducing a stronger sense of a "new season" for designs and move forward with more peripatetic designers and even more manufacture outside the country to keep prices down and give the marketing of design a stronger sense of momentum ... a stronger sense of novelty that the fashion industry has mastered so people should want to want to buy ... to stimulate sales.

I am trying to write a longer post on this but I was curious and interested to see on the H&M web site there is a section on sustainability not just for the materials they source and use but with advice for caring for clothes so they last longer and suggestions for recycling garments. For ARKET they give a short summary of the new brand as … 

“a modern-day market that offers essential products for men, women, children and the home, ARKET stores also include a café based on the New Nordic Food Manifesto. ARKET’s mission is to democratise quality through widely accessible, well-made, durable products, designed to be used and loved for a long time.”

It is the second sentence that is important. Could this actually be a major fashion company moving the other way - moving towards the marketing ethos of the best Scandinavian furniture and design companies who promote investment in quality rather than a relentless drive to create and then satisfy a customers desire for novelty?

 

 

 

Certainly it was interesting to see that the men's section does include cashmere jumpers and the jackets for their suits have proper buttonholes on the sleeve cuffs which shows that they really understand both the rules and the traditions of proper tailoring.

Shop fittings included the classic Artek Stool 60 by Alvar Aalto and the home section has the Sarpaneva Pot so both the store designers and the company buyers have a clear sense of Nordic design heritage.

The home section was good … it would actually be interesting to know who their buyer or director of home sales is because they have chosen well and it will be fascinating to see how the home section develops. Again, as with the clothes, these are good basics. And what was also interesting was that the selection of items had a different look and character that is distinct from homeware sold in the H&M stores.

At ARKET they have glass jugs with a pouring lip but straight sided, like a chemistry laboratory beaker, and a similar style of straight-sided jugs and mixing bowls in white china and there is an interesting range of enamelled cookware from Hario; glassware from Duralex and some good plain cushion covers; some simple linen and a range of those Swedish brushes by Iris Hantverk made in workshops for visually impaired workers.

For someone moving into their first unfurnished place then they could make this the first stop for … here's that word again … basics ... the good quality items that would be a good investment.

Back to general points - the historic building seems to have been restored and converted well, with a muted colour scheme of stone and grey. Packaging for underwear and so on was in plain, unbleached cardboard and the café sold fresh coffee and olive oil and other foodie things that were, again, in well-designed simple packaging … hardly revolutionary but never-the-less good to see.

The café was comfortable with well-priced coffee and some fantastic cardamom biscuits so, all in all, a good afternoon.

ARKET

 

Smaller Objects at the Swedish Embassy

/

 

Many of the pieces in the Smaller Objects collection have been designed by the Swedish architecture and design studio of Claesson Koivisto Rune but there is also a Swedish stoneware bowl, some glass from Italy and objects designed and made in Japan.

What unites all the objects is not just the very high quality of the materials used but the pieces have that hall-mark of design at the highest level in that form, function and material are balanced. In fact, it is that balance of form, function and material that makes these objects minimal in the most obvious sense … in that you realise as you look at and then you hold the objects, it would be very very difficult to add anything more or take anything away without destroying that balance. These objects are refined - not in the sense of being polite and cultivated - though they are that too - but in the sense that the design has been refined or reduced down to that point where it looks and feels right. Good minimal design is about reduction … not about going straight for the basic.

These objects also demonstrate that incredibly important aim for the best design when actually you realise that although the piece appears, at first, to be primarily about appearance and style … what, in fact, is crucial is the obvious and careful consideration of how the pieces function to make even an everyday task more enjoyable. 

The Japanese notebook is a good example where you realise that here is something that not only is beautifully made - with the experience that comes through a manufacturer who has long-established craft skills - but how someone uses a notebook has been carefully reconsidered so that even turning back a pre-cut tab to mark a place becomes a simple pleasure. That probably sounds precious or pretentious but one clear reason for - maybe the justification for - designing something that is better - or is more beautiful or is better made in beautiful materials - is that the finished object should enhance life every day when doing everyday things.

Smaller Objects.com

 
 

editor's note:

the images are set to scroll through automatically but holding the cursor over an image should halt the change to the next image and should reveal information about the object

Hay for 3daysofdesign

/

 

For 3daysofdesign, the design company Hay have taken over Lindencrones Palæ on Sankt Annæ Plads (Lindencrone’s Palace on Saint Anne’s Square). So going to this event was an opportunity to look around a pretty amazing building but for Hay it gave them dramatic settings for their furniture, lighting and kitchen and tableware. One large room had the Result Chair and Pyramid Table … maybe a first for a display designer or stylist to have so much space that they could stack so many tables so high.

Just in terms of general design principles, the show highlighted again an important aspect of Danish interiors … that in many Danish homes furniture and fittings of very different periods and styles are deliberately mixed together … so starkly modern lighting or steel and glass furniture in an old apartment that has panelling or ornate plasterwork and sash windows - though perhaps not often on the scale of this Palæ. 

Or in a starkly modern home you will find either a carefully-chosen chair from the classic period of Danish design in the 1950s and 60s or old and much-loved pieces of furniture that have been inherited.

One general but simple lesson here in the Hay display was that choosing tableware and so on carefully and then using multiples but leaving it all out as open storage on display can look pretty good.

For Hay, the building also provided an impressive setting for showing off, with pride, their latest products and for welcoming and entertaining visitors who could sit in the calm and quiet of an old entrance passage used as a temporary cafe or people could have a coffee out in the sun of the courtyard that has been fitted out with Hay’s Palissade furniture. 

Hay

 

termokande by Ole Palsby

/

When the designer Ole Palsby died in 2010, his son Mikkel Palsby decided to take over the studio, and took on responsibility for his father's design legacy. A number of projects were on hold, still to be taken through to commercial production, including a thermos jug designed in 2007.

That jug, or termoskande, is now being manufactured for the Coop group in Denmark under their Enkel label and was shown by Ole Palsby Design at the design fair northmodern in August. The shape is simple and beautiful and the jugs have a soft matt finish for the outer surface and, for obvious practical reasons, a high gloss finish to the inner rim and pouring lip. If talking about a plastic jug as beautiful sounds slightly excessive - the exaggeration of a design obsessive - surely the proportions are almost perfect and the profile incredibly elegant.

As with all kitchen-ware designed by Ole Palsby, the jug fits perfectly in the hand; it is well balanced and there are carefully thought-through details like a slight depression for the thumb at the top of the handle which makes perfect sense in terms of ergonomics … the jug  can be held securely and can be tilted at the right angle to pour out the contents steadily and safely ... in other words it functions without the user actually having to think or analyse why or how.

Mikkel Palsby kindly agreed to be the 'hand model' for photographs to show how the jug pours perfectly.

coop - enkel

Ole Palsby Design