The three most iconic Arne Jacobsen pieces to have on your interior wishlist

According to some, Arne Jacobsen was a difficult man to work with. A notorious perfectionist, his projects spanned complex buildings to a humble teaspoon over the course of a career that ran from the late 1920s until his death in 1971. His specific design vernacular made him legendary in the industry – expressions like “as thin as possible and never in the middle” and “today, we have to make a truly low, round project”. He often personified his pieces by asking collaborators how they had been “behaving”. A renaissance man, he explored every aspect of design throughout his career.

“My grandfather Arne Jacobsen worked as an architect, designer, landscape architect, exhibition designer and interior designer,” his grandson Tobias Jacobsen says. Jacobsen’s projects were “gesamtkunstwerk; total works
of art”, Tobias points out. Many of his most memorable designs were created as parts of a bigger picture, puzzle pieces in the grand visions of his architectural projects. Jacobsen was driven by a desire to create modern, functional and affordable furniture for ordinary people that could be manufactured on an industrial scale. But, as Tobias points out, “at the same time, I think his designs were shaped by his artistic sensibilities, love of nature and organic form”.

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To claim nature as your creative muse in the Nordics is practically a moot point. But for Jacobsen, botany served as something more than a pastime. In fact, the architect would often say, “If I get a new life, I would like to be a gardener”. Jacobsen expanded on this cornucopia of inspiration with his spaces and interiors working together to reflect how Scandinavia changes throughout the seasons.

“The architecture and design by Arne Jacobsen evolved throughout his career, but with an inherent focus on details and materials connected to a respect of nature,” says Marie-Louise Høstbo, the creative design director of Jacobsen’s frequent furniture collaborator Fritz Hansen. “The organic shapes of Arne Jacobsen’s design let the pieces stand out in spaces where the light changes throughout the day and throughout the year.”

Unconventional to his core, Jacobsen preferred a tactile approach. Working with a relatively small studio staff, he brought his visions to life with meticulous attention through hand-painted watercolour sketches or carefully detailed sculptures. “ We know from our research and archives that when designing both furniture and smaller design objects, Arne Jacobsen often took an experimental approach and first created models in clay and plaster,” says Tobias.

“My grandfather’s interest in new production methods, his visionary ideas and his uncompromising approach to craftsmanship, form and materials meant that he was at the forefront of Danish architecture and design throughout his career.” From Jacobsen’s Copenhagen studio flowed furniture, lamps, patterns, clocks, cutlery and glassware. But what defined all of his creations was timelessness and modernity, with his designs appearing as aesthetically relevant today as they did when they were first introduced.

One such innovation was the Ant chair. In 1952 it was the first of its kind: a small, stackable chair with a seat and back as a single shell. The design saw the plywood bent in two directions, made from nine layers of pressure moulded veneer, creating a double curvature crucial to making the chair sturdy enough to sit in. In an interview with the Danish newspaper Information in 1953, Jacobsen revealed his process. “In the old days, it was pretty easy to design a chair because the forms were different,” he told the newspaper.

“My chair is made of compressed and bent plywood, it is three-dimensional. So I had to turn to clay in the design process.” He goes on to declare the need for a “small, lightweight, affordable chair”. Over the following decades, Jacobsen designed a series of new shell chairs with different silhouettes, all based on the same underlying principle. The most famous of these successors is Series 7 from 1955, whose simple shape is now found in private homes and public spaces worldwide.

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Following the success of his Ant chair, Jacobsen would continue his all-consuming work, curating every aspect of a functional life. No project had more impact or more attention to detail than the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen. The first highrise on Danish soil, the building was to be called a “Landmark of the Jet Age”, characterising the 1950s. Beginning construction in 1956, the hotel was inaugurated in 1960 and was considered the most modern hotel in Scandinavia at the time. And Jacobsen directed every detail. “He designed everything from the building to the door stops. The furniture for the hotel, bars, restaurant, and rooms were designed by Jacobsen too,” says Høstbo.

Among the hotel furniture that Jacobsen designed was the Egg chair. Created in 1958, it is an excellent example of how Jacobsen utilised new industrial methods of furniture production to realise his striking, sculptural designs. “To me, the chair’s organic lines are the result of his artistic approach to design and a novel technological method,” says Tobias. He pinpoints the novelty of the moulded hard foam, which allowed Jacobsen to go beyond the limitations of traditional materials like wood and steel. Instead, the designer could play freely with shape, the only restriction in forming his furniture pieces being his own imagination.

According to former employees of Jacobsen, the designer would work on a model in plaster for days, adding and filing off material, moulding and shaping it like a sculptor. “Subsequently, when the design would be further developed at the manufacturer’s workshop, he would be deeply involved in the process, discussing with the technicians, and snipping and cutting until the design met his high aesthetic and functional demands,” says Tobias. Jacobsen was known for being meticulous, so the collaboration was not always smooth, but the results were often groundbreaking.

Not only did Jacobsen’s work on the SAS Royal Hotel see the Egg chair come to life, the project was also the originator of one of his iconic AJ cutlery sets, created in collaboration with Georg Jensen. “From the very beginning, the cutlery caused a lot of controversy with its simple and innovative form,” says Georg Jensen’s creative director, Ragnar Hjartarson. Designing cutlery in stainless steel was a novel and provocative thing in 1957. “Arne Jacobsen’s objective was to create an affordable and functional alter native to traditional silver cutlery,” says Tobias. “He aimed to eliminate the transitions between the elements of the cutlery and instead combine the industrial steel with soft, organic lines that naturally fit the hand."

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The sleek futuristic design, a form favoured during the space age of the 1960s, quickly gave the cutlery cult status. It was even used on board the spacecraft in Stanley Kubrick’s iconic 1968 science-fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey and featured in the Star Trek series. The Egg chair, Series 7 and the AJ Cutlery have all consistently been in production since they were first launched in the 1950s, remaining a vital reference in Danish design. The uncompromising Jacobsen left a legacy that reflects his complex nature. Often the designer looked to escape the very thing he had helped to create. “I am choking on aesthetics,” he would say in private.

“The complete oeuvre of Arne Jacobsen shows how scale, proportions and materials connect – this is concurrently part of Danish design,” Høstbo says.

“He was an important and original contributor, both to modernism and Scandinavian design,” Hjartarson agrees. Not considered intellectual or analytical in a traditional sense, Jacobsen was a man of the future. His work continues to influence our everyday life and is evident in our surroundings: the urban space, the workplace and our homes.