Kjærholm trained both as a cabinetmaker and an architect, giving him a unique feel for the combination of craftsmanship and aesthetics. His production is characterised by his deep love of the material and his endeavour to use it to its fullest. By virtue of his skills as a cabinetmaker, Kjærholm transformed the cold, industrial steel into beautiful pieces of craftsmanship. His genius lay in bending the steel as if it were a paper aeroplane, without the use of joints and welds. This transformation of steel into an almost organic material is characteristic of Kjærholm’s furniture, taking it to a level of its own in Danish furniture history.

Kjærholm’s minimalist and stringent mode of expression is strongly inspired by the visual artist Piet Mondrian and the Bauhaus architects Gerrit Rietveld and Mies van der Rohe. Kjærholm is therefore also regarded as one of the foremost Danish representatives of international modernism, who was at the same time deeply rooted in the Danish furniture tradition. Kjærholm ended his long career as a professor at the furniture school at Denmark’s School of Art and Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen from 1976–80.