Explore the making-of ‘The Bed
Georg Jensen’s HQ occupies a yellow-brick, former porcelain factory building in the leafy neighbourhood of Frederiksberg, Copenhagen. It’s a suitably impressive place, befitting a world-renowned heritage brand, but what sets it apart is what it contains, rather than its architecture. On its first floor is the world’s largest silver smithy, where the time-honoured craft of shaping hollowware by hand, and without the use of moulds, is still practised.
Georg Jensen’s product developer Philip Mørch-Lassen, a silversmith with a background in computer animation, was tasked with turning Elmgreen & Dragset’s vision into reality. He runs through the technicalities with the artists – the sharpness of the indentations, the way the lid will close, the choice of fabric for the interior – before mapping out ‘The Bed’ on his computer to calculate the amount of silver required for the piece. Then it’s off to the smithy.
A project like this usually takes half a year to turn around, but with less than three months until the piece had to be exhibited in Milan, the making was entrusted to the finest of experts, Michael Birkefeldt, who has worked at Georg Jensen for two decades, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. His biggest challenge was ensuring a perfect union between base and lid. Once this was done, ‘The Bed’ was fitted with its high-density foam interior, which was lined with felt by a nearby upholsterer.
While Birkefeldt worked to create two ‘Beds’, so one could be shown open and the other closed, Elmgreen & Dragset drew up plans for the display, a half-egg-shaped white plinth with a strip of Black Belgian marble, and a matching reception desk, which would take over the foyer of our venue in Milan, nodding to the suggested positioning of ‘The Bed’ at the entrance to a home.
The finished ‘Beds’ were a hit in Milan, and judging from the fingerprints that kept appearing on the silver in spite of our best efforts to polish it, many visitors couldn’t keep their hands to themselves. ‘It was nice to see how people reacted,’ reflects Manville. ‘A craft that is over a hundred years old came to life in such a contemporary environment. This project has made Georg Jensen bolder about what we can contribute to the conversation between art and craft.’
In fact, both parties were so pleased with their Handmade adventure that they are producing a limited-edition series of five (in addition to the original, bound for Elmgreen & Dragset’s Berlin studio). Manville has plans to send the pieces on a world tour in Georg Jensen stores. So if you missed ‘The Bed’ in Milan, there will be plenty of opportunities to see it. Just resist the impulse to whip out your phone and broadcast that moment on social media – like love, this is an artwork best experienced in real time, in real life
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