	Home > Lifestyle > Meet the Danes > Great Danes > Designers > Kaare Klint

Designers

Send

Kaare Klint

In 1924, the architect Kaare Klint, 1888-1954, became the first Lecturer in Furniture Design in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen.

Through his teaching and with his own work, he made an impact on several generations of Danish furniture designers; a few of them, for instance Finn Juhl, he inspired to a counter-reaction.

At a time when modernism was rejecting former models, Kaare Klint took his starting point in the experience of materials and construction going back to Classicism, combining this with proportion studies. His furniture fitted into a Danish classical tradition that was hereby given new life.

He also found models in English furniture from the 18th century, the Shakers in the USA, and anonymous pieces of southern European furniture, and he re-fashioned and simplified them to produce modern furniture.

Rudolf Rasmussen's Snedkerier (Cabinet Maker's) in Copenhagen provided him with exquisite mahogany, the surface of which was easy to work, but where on the other hand fine contouring emphasises both form and construction.

Each detail, brass fittings, hand-woven coverings and perfect leather, stresses the high level of quality which is particularly typical of Kaare Klint's museum furniture, for example that for the Museum of Decorative Art in Copenhagen.

Mirjam Gelfer-Jørgensen, Gyldendal Leksikon

	Martin Nyrop
	Hans J. Wegner
	Thorvald Bindesbøll

Edited February 12, 2008

Follow denmark on:

Contact Disclaimer