Georg Jensen

Why it is renowned

Georg Jensen had shops in Berlin from 1909, London from 1921 and New York from 1924, and its silver won a gold medal in Brussels in 1910 and the Grand Prix at the world's fair of 1915.¹² Museums collected his work in his lifetime, among them the Museum Folkwang in Germany, and in 2005 the Bard Graduate Center in New York gave his jewellery an exhibition of its own.¹ The Victoria and Albert Museum in London holds a milk jug and a ladle he made in Copenhagen between 1909 and 1914 (M.77-1997, M.78-1997).³ 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 1962.² The Swedish silversmith Vivianna Torun Bülow-Hübe designed for the house from 1969; her work is in the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Louvre.⁴

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 1904.¹ His first piece of jewellery, in 1899, was a silver and gilt belt buckle, and his early work followed Art Nouveau: rounded organic forms, flowers and bunches of grapes, the jewellery set with amber, garnet, citrine, moonstone and opal.¹⁵ After the Second World War the house took on Sigvard Bernadotte, Henning Koppel, Søren Georg Jensen, Magnus Stephensen and Nanna Ditzel, and later designers include Torun, Arno Malinowski and Astrid Fog.²⁶⁴ The company is based in Frederiksberg and has belonged to the Fiskars group since 2023.²

What to know it by

• Moonlight Grapes⁶Silver jewellery with bunches of grapes
• Daisy⁶Enamelled flower jewellery
• Mobius⁴1959Vivianna Torun Bülow-HübeNecklace with a crystal drop
• Torun⁶Vivianna Torun Bülow-HübeBangles, neck rings and earrings
• Art Nouveau silver⁵1904Georg JensenHollowware with flowers and grapes
• Henning Koppel²Henning KoppelSilver by Henning Koppel
• Bernadotte²Sigvard BernadotteSilver by Sigvard Bernadotte