The third generation has arrived: Sofia Lynggaard-Normann is getting into the family business

We rarely feel so bare as when we are without our favourite jewellery. The same is true for Sofia Lynggaard-Normann. “It’s such a weird feeling, like you’re naked!” she exclaims. “I can’t go anywhere without this one.” She holds up a pinky, showing off her ring; a fish with big aquamarine eyes holding a pearl in its open mouth, its scales and a fish net intricately carved into the 18-karat gold. It’s the first piece she designed for the brand her grandfather Ole Lynggaard founded in 1963.

There was never any pressure to follow in her grandfather’s footsteps. Nor was there any pressure from her mother, Charlotte Lynggaard, who launched her first collection for the family brand in 1994. “But grandfather and I drew together whenever he took care of me. It was our thing,” Lynggaard-Normann says. “And I grew up running back and forth between school and the company, everyone there is like family.” Countless days were spent sketching at her mother’s desk, a workspace they now share as colleagues. “For me, it has always been a gift that Sofia and I have so many things in common and can share the passion for creating,” says Charlotte.

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Mother and daughter now design side-by-side at the workshop, which sits on the very same street in Hellerup, Copenhagen as it did when Ole Lynggaard first set up shop. Today, the same qualities that garnered Ole attention and solidified the brand as a Scandinavian mainstay have been passed down to his daughter and granddaughter. Notably, his obsession with craftsmanship and prowess in mirroring nature – now the unmistakable stamp of a timeless Lynggaard design.

“Mum always told me, ‘Nature is as beautiful as it gets. You can’t compete with or recreate it. It’s just the inspiration’,” Lynggaard-Normann recites. And her mother is thrilled at her daughter’s personal manifestation of this inherited family value. “Sofia has a unique way of expressing herself in her designs, where her connection with nature and the ocean shines through as well as her sense of humour and aesthetic flair,” she says. “Ever since she was little, she has had a fantastic way of communicating through her drawings.”

“It’s my way of escaping, putting together universes in my sketchbook,” echoes Lynggaard-Norman. Her ring, along with the rest of her debut collection, comes from one universe she’s been immersed in for years: the ocean. “It’s meditation for me, being under water,” she says, noting that it was on a diving trip that the sea became her main inspiration. “Being eye-level with the fish, seeing every detail. It’s a new experience every time, even if you dive to the exact same spot.” Around the time Lynggaard-Normann’s sketchbooks began filling up with shapes of the ocean, she began seeing jewellery in her drawings too; first glimpses of her soon-to-be released collection, ‘Under the Sea’.

But the years between her first dive and the release of this collection haven’t all been smooth sailing. Lynggaard-Normann studied at the same school as her grandfather and mother, but the education that had fuelled their creativity did the opposite for her. “I felt very limited, unable to transfer what was in my head into the material. It was a real challenge for me,” she admits. “After the first year I began to think, ‘If I continue, I might kill my imagination.’ I had to tell my family, who were so proud that I had taken this direction.”

Caught between her fear of letting them down and following her intuition, Lynggaard-Normann chose the latter and started studying design in London. “There, my flame burned again. It gave me the motivation to come back and say ‘I can do this, but I have to do it in my own way.’” This meant leaning into her strengths and acknowledging her limits, namely, knowing she would “never be the best goldsmith”. And so, she turned to wax.

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“Nowadays, there is talk that young people never finish things. I didn’t want to be like that,” she says. “But I feel that I’ve grown ten times more than if I had stayed on that path. And I wouldn’t be where I am now, or feel as secure in who I am.”

With this confidence, she releases her first Ole Lynggaard collection: a series of gold bangles and necklaces whose forms reflect the ever-changing water, with precious gems arranged into octopi and exotic fish. “It tells of the power and movement of the sea,” says Lynggaard-Normann. “There’s a bracelet with no clasp to show its motion, how it goes on forever. And the grooves in the gold are the space between its surface and bottom, showing how they move and mirror one another.” She feels peace of mind that the collection came about doing things her way.

Even so, she didn’t show her grandfather the collection until it was completely finished – a habit since their drawing sessions when she was little. “If I showed him too quickly, he’d answer with, ‘This needs more work’. Approval only came when he really meant it,” she says. So she waited, nervously, until the collection’s exhibition. “He put his hand on my shoulder and said ‘This is a 12’. I cried, because it was the biggest thing that could happen.”

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Ole is not shy with his praise. “I am fascinated by the many minute details in Sofia’s designs, by her imagination, and by the way she endows much of her jewellery and sketches with a humorous touch. A smiling octopus for instance,” he says. In fact, he liked what his granddaughter had made so much, he gifted his wife – Lynggaard-Normann’s grandmother – one of the bracelets for her birthday. “He’s always given her jewellery he made, but this year he gave her one of mine,” she says. “The best compliment I could ever have asked for.”