DesignAddict

Jacobsen
Arne

DENMARK

		1902 Copenhagen (DK) 1971 Copenhagen (DK)
Architect, Furniture and Product designer. Jacobsen's most famous achievement is the S.A.S Royal Hotel in Copenhagen in 1959 where he also designed the interior furnishing ('Egg' chair and'Swan' chair) and the utilitarian objects. He designed for Fritz Hansen, Louis Poulsen, Vola, Stelton and Michelsen, among others.

ARNE JACOBSEN

FRITZ HANSEN

STELTON

KVADRAT

VOLA

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FURNITURE [10]

TABLEWARE [14]

ACCESSORIES [2]

MISCELLANEOUS [3]

Courtesy Kvadrat

'Cirkler' Fabric

D E S I G N E R
Arne Jacobsen

P R O D U C E R
Kvadrat, Denmark

M A T E R I A L
fabric
92% wool - 8% nylon


From the A.J. Centennium collection. In 7 colourways.

Courtesy Kvadrat

'Gran' Fabric

D E S I G N E R
Arne Jacobsen

P R O D U C E R
Kvadrat, Denmark

M A T E R I A L
fabric
100% polyester

The story began during the Second World War. Jacobsen was of Jewish descent and consequently feared for his life. In September 1943, he fled to Sweden in a little rowing boat with his friend and colleague Poul Henningsen. Besides the fact that they all nearly drowned, the story has it that, in the end, their wives had to row them all for more than four hours to reach Sweden.
Since he was not permitted to work as an architect during his stay in Sweden, he began to create designs for textiles; an occupation that he continued to pursue in Denmark after the end of the war.
The “Swedish” designs are highly organic and his motifs are derived from shapes found in nature itself. Later, on his return to Denmark, he began to bring in more abstract and geometric shapes.
His production of textiles in the 1950s developed as a hybrid between the figurative plant patterns and a more abstract and strict form of expression, which became
increasingly dominant.
In the 1960s, Arne Jacobsen’s textiles were purely abstract and geometric, characterised by more or less repeating abstractions, manifesting themselves as circles, trapeziums or orthogons. The repetition and colour contrasts of the motifs cause the observer’s eye to be seduced and deceived.
Jacobsen could spend hours sitting making minute variations to the highly abstract geometric textile patterns until he came up with the final result.
One example that serves to emphasise the contradictions in the very person of Arne Jacobsen – between the rational and strict modernist on the one hand, and the nature-loving romantic on the other.
- Kvadrat-