The Joining of the Arts: Danish Art and Design, 1880–1910

Abstract

Georg Jensen is best known as a silversmith and as the founder of his namesake company, today a global brand. But Jensen also made and exhibited ceramics— first large-scale sculptures and then smaller vessels decorated with flora, fauna, and sometimes people. With his frequent collaborator Christian Joachim, Jensen designed an earthenware jar, simple in form save for the sculpted figure of a woman donning modern dress and hairstyle, who protrudes from the top of the handle and seems to tiptoe across the edge of the jar’s top lip (Fig. 1). Along with the story of Jensen’s parallel career in ceramics, this rough-hewn piece is but one of the many stunning pearls that fill the pages of Mirjam Gelfer-Jørgensen’s most recent contribution to the history of Danish art and design. Others include Danish Jewish Art (1999), Furniture with Meaning: Danish Furniture, 1840–1920 (2009), and Influences from Japan in Danish...