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The Danish silver company
Georg Jensen was founded in 1904 and by the 1920s it had shops
all over the world- New York, Buenos Aires, Paris, London, Stockholm,
and Berlin and by the 1950s Jensen even had a shop on the Queen
Mary cruise liner. The son of a blacksmith and born in 1866,
Georg Jensen grew up in a poor family in the little industrial
town of Raavad north of Copenhagen. He always called it "a
paradise on earth", fondly remembering its powerful oaks,
towering beeches, and blue clay which he used to sculpture human
figures. As a boy, he was sent to work at a foundry to help
support his parents and seven siblings. When he was 14, his
family moved to Copenhagen where he apprenticed with a goldsmith.
In his spare time, he took drawing, geometry, engraving, and
modeling courses during which time he decided to become a sculptor.
While it was an improbable ambition for a working class young
man, Georg passed the entrance examination of the Royal Danish
Academy of Fine Arts and joined its sculpture class in 1887.
After graduating in 1892, he first made art pottery while he
married and had 2 children. After his wife died suddenly, he
decided he would return to his old craft of metalsmithing to
support his family making silver jewelry to his own designs.
Finally, in 1904, he opened his own shop in Copenhagen and soon
had 60 people working for him. His designs were a success, but
his business acumen was not as he constantly needed to rely
on new investors. Overall, his life was filled with personal
sorrow having lost 3 wives as well as eventually the control
of the company. In 1925, he left the company and moved to Paris
to start a new workshop, but this venture was unsuccessful and
he returned to Copenhagen. There, he rejoined the company as
the artistic director where he continued to design for the company
bearing his name until his death.
The Georg Jensen name
has always carried the mantle of the highest quality silver,
made using the most expensive techniques of production. Authentic
Georg Jensen silver is also quite hard to find, for even in
its heyday in the 1930s - 1950s the number of silversmiths employed
varied between only about 200 and 250. Today, the firm employs
only 12. At one time, Jensen made 33 flatware patterns, 23 of
which are no longer produced, and about 1200 holloware items
such as bowls, candelabra, pitchers, tea sets, trays, vases,
wine coolers, and covered fish platters. Like Georg Jensen jewelry,
many holloware pieces were embellished with semiprecious stones
like amber, amethyst, garnet, lapis lazuli, malachite, opal,
and quartz. Within a given flatware pattern such as the very
popular "Acorn", Jensen created as many as 272 separate
pieces including serving pieces, fish knives and forks, ice
cream spoons, and a fascinating array of other utensils and
utility pieces. While Georg Jensen silver comes in distinct
Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and Modern styles, Georg Jensen himself
was a follower of the Art Nouveau movemenet. His signature motif,
the cluster of grapes, is part of his repertory of forms from
nature which included berries, leaves, and fauna which he combined
with lightly hammered plain surfaces. Over the years before
his death in 1935, Jensen hired a series of talented designers
who were allowed to go their own ways. the most noteworthy include
Harald Nielsen (1892-1977), the young brother of Jensen's third
wife Johanne Nielsen, Count Sigvard Bernadotte (1907-2002),
the second son of Gustav VI of Sweden who was known for his
classic geometric shapes like cylinders, spheres, and streaming
elements, and Henning Koppel (1918-1981), a radical modernist
whose unadorned biomorphic designs have become icons of their
time and are in great demand. As such, Jensen's greatest talent
may have been his ability to find and nurture other talents.
One of the most talented, original, and influential silversmiths
of the 20th century, Georg Jensen silver designs live on today
as one of the most highly sought examples of the art of fine
silver.
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