Thorvald Bindesbøll is today considered a design icon. With his twining, airy ornamentation and muted colour palette, he very much epitomised the Danish Art Nouveau style. He was a highly productive craftsman, and his ceramic works and especially his silverware and jewellery produced in collaboration with Court Jeweller Michelsen and Holger Kyster are much treasured. He also designed the iconic labels for Carlsberg’s beer bottles.
Kähler, Carlsberg and the Skagen Painters
Thorvald Bindesbøll was educated at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, graduating as an architect in 1876. As a designer and craftsman, Bindesbøll was one of the most prolific and original talents within Danish decorative art. Working with Johann Wallmann’s ceramic factory in Utterslev, Kähler in Næstved, P. Ipsens Enke and Københavns Lervarefabrik in Valby, he produced a great many designs for decorated earthenware. He designed furniture, embroideries, picture frames, cutlery, chandeliers, lamps, sepulchral monuments and church windows as well as book bindings and labels, of which the label for Carlsberg Pilsner “Hof” from 1904 is the most famous. Bindesbøll also designed the Dragon Fountain on Rådhuspladsen, the City Hall Square in Copenhagen, in collaboration with Joakim Skovgaard and was a significant figure in the circle surrounding the Skagen painters.
Court Jeweller Michelsen and the Silver
Over the years, Bindesbøll produced a number of designs for corpus silver. At the Paris Exposition in 1900 (Exposition Universelle), Bindesbøll was well represented in the Danish decorative art section, with, among other things, his jewellery designed for Court Jeweller Michelsen. He was also awarded a gold medal in Paris for his layout for the Danish exhibition. From 1904, Bindesbøll enjoyed a successful collaboration with the silversmith Holger Kyster in Kolding, who used Bindesbøll’s designs extensively. In the years after his death in 1908, awareness of Thorvald Bindesbøll’s importance to the design world grew. He was, in many ways, greatly ahead of his time.
