Jewelry was not simply one aspect of Georg Jensen’s production, it was at the heart of the firm’s early success. In those early, undercapitalized days, there was a fast turnover in brooches and belt buckles that helped the Jensen smithy to expand in less than 20 years from a small, second-floor storefront to an international company.

The surprise is that something like this has not been done before. Despite its importance in the his-tory of modern design, the Jensen silversmithy seems to have been overlooked by exhibition organizers, and the last big show in the United States took place 25 years ago.

Founder Georg Jensen was, until recently, an elusive figure. Jensen published his autobiography as a short magazine feature, and his early biographers preferred the pamphlet format. More substantial works were published after his death, though these were accessible principally to readers of the Danish language. Recent scholarship, much of it in English, confirms Jensen’s modesty and benevolence, but it also reveals a less serene man than the contemplative nature-lover of his self-portrait.

Jensen was born in a rural village near Copenhagen. His mother was, before her marriage, a house-maid, and his father worked in a knife factory. For a time, it looked as if Jensen would follow the same course. However, his apprenticeship at the knife factory was interrupted by the family’s move to Co-penhagen in 1880. Jensen, by then in his mid-teens, started anew with a goldsmith, who retained him as an apprentice until 1886.

This silver bird brooch with cabochon cut coral, circa 1925 and manufactured between 1933 and 1944, is pure Jensen. Private collection.

After his training was finished, Jensen was employed byanother goldsmith, but he was too unsettled to stay there long.What Jensen really wanted to be was a sculptor. It was not a newambition. He had been modeling clay figures since childhood and hadtaken classes in drawing and modeling during his apprenticeshipwith the goldsmith. An introduction to a professor at the Academyof Fine Arts was the first step to his admission, in 1887, to theacademy’s school of sculpture.

The next years augured well for the young artist. His work was chosen for the annual spring exhibition at Charlottenborg Palace in Copenhagen, once when he was a student and a few times after he graduated in 1892. Beginning in 1897, he also participated in the Free Exhibitions, which were the avant-garde alternative to Charlottenborg. There was even the opportunity to visit France and Italy, thanks to a travel grant awarded by the academy. Despite an auspicious start, Jensen had trouble earning a living as a sculptor. He could not depend on his family for money, and his financial responsibilities were increased by early marriage and fatherhood.

Thus began a series of design jobs with poor and uncertain remuneration that took Jensen further and further away from sculpting. He worked for various ceramic firms, which made use of his talent for modeling. In 1898, he and two friends began to make art pottery on their own. Their vases and bowls were praised and illustrated in the press. The critical attention accorded their work was significant because there were many better known firms in Denmark that were also producing art pottery. In 1899, the Danish Museum of Decorative Art acquired the “Maid on the Jar,” a heavy, unglazed terra-cotta jug that was exhibited that year at Charlottenborg and possibly again the following year at the Exposition Universelle in Paris.

Nonetheless, pottery proved to be no more lucrative than sculpture, and Jensen was forced to look about for a more reliable source of income. He had in the past fallen back on smithing, but these were stopgap jobs to supplement his student budget and during the flailing years, when he could not make a living as a sculptor. By the turn of the century, Jensen’s views had changed and he saw metalwork as compatible with his artistic vocation rather than as an expedient respite from penury.

Jensen’s eventual acceptance of his childhood profession coincided with his exposure to the new ideas, which rejected the traditional hierarchy that rated painting and sculpture above the applied arts. Co-penhagen might not have been one of the great arts capitals, but it was possible to stay abreast of what was happening in places like France and England. There were exhibitions at the Danish Museum of Decorative Art and foreign and local art publications. As a member of the Danish delegation to the 1900 Exposition Universelle, Jensen would have seen firsthand the respect accorded the applied arts.

The Danish Arts & Crafts movement, which was known as Skønvirke (for “beautiful work”), flourished from 1880 to 1920. One influential figure in Skønvirke circles was Mogens Ballin (1871-1941), the painter turned craftsman, who ran an influential metal workshop in Copenhagen. Ballin was inspired by English designers like William Morris and C. R. Ashbee. He made jewelry and hollowware, using inexpensive materials like bronze and pewter. Beginning in 1901, Jensen was the foreman of this workshop, which employed about 30 people. It would have been a stimulating place to work, thanks not least to Ballin himself, who was an associate of Paul Gauguin and an early collector of van Gogh. Ballin was, moreover, generous about crediting his designers, and he allowed Jensen to exhibit his work under his own name.

The designers who succeeded Jensen abandoned the tradition of botanical motifs and favored instead purely abstract shapes, as seen in this Steffan Andersen necklace, 1969. Courtesy of The Silver Fund Collection.

Nonetheless, Jensen wanted to work on his own. In 1904, withfinancing from a local businessman, he set up his smithy – acramped, second floor space – in a fashionable part of Copenhagen.Jensen specialized in silver jewelry, which was a field thatrequired less investment than hollowware. From the beginning,Jensen’s jewelry had certain characteristics. Pieces were made ofsilver with a matte or oxidized finish and decorated withcabochon-cut (that is, rounded) semi-precious stones. Botanicalmotifs were prevalent and the Jensen form was sculptural, notsmooth and shiny. A typical brooch (design no. 27), which was madethe year Jensen set up shop, has the thick, tactile, hand-hammeredquality associated with his jewelry. It is decorated with two smallcarnelian stones and a pendant cluster of grapes, a motif thatJensen used often in his work.

Jensen’s confidence and fertility were not exactly newfound. He had enjoyed a growing reputation when he was still Ballin’s foreman. Yet his new designs were more consistently original than anything he had done before. For comparison, the curators have included two pieces that he had made only a few years earlier. The famous cast-silver “Adam and Eve” (1899) is one of his only pieces to depict the human figure. The stocky man and woman in bas-relief, set in a striated frame, suggest nothing of what Jensen would be capable of only half a decade later.

Another piece on display – this one showing greater skill and refinement – is the dragonfly belt buckle (1903). Jensen was already applying cabochon-cut semi-precious stones (in this case, opals). The piece reveals, though, the plodding influence of Art Nouveau designers like René Lalique, whose work was also collected by the Danish Museum of Decorative Art. Jensen’s adaptation of Art Nouveau motifs would not always be so heavy-handed. The “whiplash” brooch (design no. 159), an apt example, has S-shaped tendrils set inside a wreath of silver leaves and moonstones. It was designed sometime before World War I and was in production for decades. Years after the “master’s” death, it was still showing up on pricelists.

Jensen never faltered once he hit his stride. He often arrived in the morning with pockets full of new designs. Sometimes the design was incomplete, so Jensen passed it on to a silversmith to complete. His confidence in his craftsmen was total and they reciprocated with loyalty. Jensen was a man of lifelong friendships. His marriages, tragically, tended to be of shorter duration, with four of his five wives pre-deceasing him.

He was a habile recycler of motifs. The dove, one of the most frequently recurring motifs in Jensen’s jewelry, was originally designed by Christian Møhl-Hansen, who was one of the many artists to work for Jensen on a freelance basis. It was first used for a brooch (circa 1907-1909), and has since appeared on a range of objects, some of which are included in the exhibition. The dove is traditionally shown craning its neck backwards to look at its wing. Such is the case with a bracelet (design 1927; manufactured 1933/34) that Jensen designed at the end of his career. Here, a chain of backward-looking doves is alternating with leaves and small round stones. More unusual is the brooch (design 1925; manufactured 193¾4) that Jensen designed about the same time, which shows the dove looking straight ahead. These variations aside, both pieces are pure Jensen with their heavy, sculptural form, botanical motifs and use of small, round stones.

Another proof of his efficiency was the custom of using different stones for the same design. Pricelists usually list at least a half-dozen stone choices for each model. Sometimes, though, only a small number of a given design was made. Such is the case with one of the exhibition belt buckles (1907), a larger than average piece with a red berry pendant from the center. It is believed to be one of ten in existence.

The first years of the Georg Jensen smithy were remembered nostalgically. Jensen worked side-by-side with his two assistants, often singing nonsense ditties that he had made up. His business model was simple: a small street-level showcase displayed recent production. When those brooches and stick pins sold out, the showcase was refilled with more. Beginning in 1907, his marriage to wife number three (Johanne Nielsen) brought an infusion of in-laws to help with bookkeeping and other administra-tive responsibilities. His brother-in-law, Harald Nielsen, worked all his life for the firm, starting as an apprentice.

Henning Koppel, one of the Danish silversmithy’s most important designers, was more in-fluenced by Jean Arp than C.R. Ashbee. Courtesy of The Silver Fund Collection.

But in less than a decade, the small, familial workshop hadexpanded to become a large operation employing more than 60workers. In 1916, the company became a joint-stock company, and bythe mid-1920s, there were stores in Europe and New York.

Jensen was ambivalent about this growth, which resulted in a large staff and financial complexity. In one sad episode, he tried to relive the early days by setting up a workshop in Paris. He moved there in 1924 with his fourth wife and five workmen. Despite the respect for his work, Jensen was disoriented by French culture. In 1926, he returned to Copenhagen to take up his responsibilities as “Artistic Su-pervisor”-one of those euphemistic job titles that masked, he felt, his diminished influence in the company.

After Jensen’s death in 1935, the company continued to flourish. The exhibition tells the story of these later designers, too. Henning Koppel (1918-1981) was one of the many important designers who worked at Georg Jensen. He joined the company in 1945 after studying painting and sculpture in Paris and in Copenhagen. He was a generation younger than Jensen and he came to silver design with different artistic references. Koppel was influenced by abstract sculptors Jean Arp and Constantin Brancusi; hence, the vaguely avian-shaped links in the necklace and bracelet (design no. 89).

Vivianna Torun Bülow-Hübe is another designer who made a name for herself at Georg Jensen. She started with the firm in the 1960s, and she was one of the designers most in touch with the period. Her neckring and pendant (1967) reflect her desire to create jewelry that would follow the contours of a woman’s body.

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