Georg Jensen

Why it is renowned

Georg Jensen opened shops in Berlin in 1909, London in 1921 and New York in 1924, and its silver won a gold medal at the Brussels exhibition of 1910 and the Grand Prix at the world's fair of 1915.¹² His work entered museum collections in his lifetime, among them the Museum Folkwang in Germany, and the Bard Graduate Center in New York gave his jewellery an exhibition in 2005.² After the war the house showed at large exhibitions of Danish crafts at the Louvre in 1958, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1960 and the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1962.¹

The story

Georg Jensen, the son of a knife grinder from Rådvad, trained as a goldsmith, studied sculpture at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and worked with the silversmith Mogens Ballin before opening his own workshop at Bredgade 36 in Copenhagen in 1904.² His early silver followed Art Nouveau, with rounded organic forms, flowers and bunches of grapes.²³ After the Second World War the workshop took on Sigvard Bernadotte, Henning Koppel, Søren Georg Jensen, Magnus Stephensen and Nanna Ditzel.¹ The company is based in Frederiksberg and has belonged to the Fiskars group since 2023.¹

What to know it by

• Art Nouveau silver1904Georg JensenHollowware with flowers and grapes
• Henning KoppelHenning KoppelSilver by Henning Koppel
• BernadotteSigvard BernadotteSilver by Sigvard Bernadotte