Throughout 3 Days of Design 2026, Georg Jensen took over an area within the metropolis’s Højbro Plads (reverse its showroom) and reworked it right into a ‘Secret Backyard’ to debut its new ‘Georg Jensen at Play’ assortment. That includes silver and stone cube, a woodland-inspired Mikado set, a spinning prime, a snail whistle, a yo-yo and a brand new tackle the normal Scandinavian ‘Kubb’ Recreation (right here renamed ‘Toad’), the sequence faucets right into a playful aspect of the Danish design home and silversmithy, and gives an perception into inventive director’s Paula Gerbase’s strategy to the illustrious heritage of the model.
Since her appointment in 2024, Gerbase has been finding out Georg Jensen’s historical past and the alternatives to quietly shake up its heritage in a method that’s each thrilling and respectful. Current launches embrace a house perfume debut, and a group of archival jewelry expressing modernist Danish design ideas. With ‘Georg Jensen at Play’, Gerbase uncovers one other chapter of the corporate’s legacy, impressed by its founder’s personal life and the strategy to silver that has outlined its historical past.
We met Gerbase at Georg Jensen’s ‘Secret Backyard’ to seek out out extra about how play matches into the corporate’s historical past, and the way it’s serving to form her future imaginative and prescient.
Georg Jensen at 3 Days of Design: interview with Paula Gerbase
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Georg Jensen)
Wallpaper*: Why did you select video games?
Paula Gerbase: My notion of Georg Jensen earlier than I began was fairly completely different to what I discovered once I joined. [I saw the company as] one thing that was fairly rigorous; it was about high quality and silversmithing, however in my opinion it had a seriousness to it, and an overarching diligence. However truly, as I began to uncover the historical past of the person himself, the way in which that he arrange his unique atelier, the place his roots had been from, my notion modified.
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Georg Jensen)
W*: Are you able to inform me extra about Georg Jensen’s life earlier than he based his workshop?
PG: [He came] from this woodland space exterior of Copenhagen, fairly humble beginnings. As a baby, he was a wanderer, and this curiosity was actually integral to how he lived and labored. I used to be instructed tales of him as younger boy, being despatched out to fetch milk, after which being shocked at discovering a little bit discipline mouse, forgetting concerning the job, and scooping up the sector mouse and taking it house.
Then it was fast-forward to his sculpture training on the Royal Academy right here in Copenhagen, after which his being awarded a journey research scholarship, whereby he went to France and Italy, and actually absorbed lots of [local] nature. He then got here again house, and when he began working as a goldsmith, most of his items had been belt buckles, brooches, pendants, all very animalistic: bugs, critters, fireflies. So all of these parts led me to grasp that what I used to be truly endeavor was one thing a lot extra playful, it had a lot extra freedom, and was additionally extra fluid in nature.
And I additionally noticed an openness to likelihood: when [Georg] began organising his personal atelier, collaboration was there from the very starting, with different artists, sculptors, silversmiths invited are available in and reinterpret his personal work. This turned integral to how he based the corporate, but additionally how he continued his legacy.
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Georg Jensen)
‘Should you inherit one thing, you are inheriting it with the traces of moments properly lived’
Paula Gerbase
W*: How has this formed your strategy to silver?
PG: That openness is one thing that I might like to recreate right here: a chance for likelihood encounters, an area which has some generosity, a playfulness, and curiosity for permitting individuals to work together with silver in a method that is not so rarefied. [It’s a chance for] talking of fabric, a fabric that’s residing and respiratory, has patina, and dents, and evolves with time; and naturally, it’s absolute high quality, however we’re displaying the fabric for what it’s, which is a really lovely materials that may climate and soak up these easy moments. As a result of should you inherit one thing, you are inheriting it with the traces of these moments properly lived.
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Georg Jensen)
W*: How did that result in ‘Georg Jensen at Play’?
PG: It felt utterly pure to create an area to permit for these dialogues, and for individuals to have the ability to contact and really feel the fabric, and perhaps additionally [to give them] permission to take a look at design as imperfection.
Design needs to be reflective of the way in which that we reside and [our work] ought to help and honour that. I feel silver as a fabric can actually try this as a result of it does soak up [lived] moments, and it has markings of these moments.
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Georg Jensen)
W*: That is an fascinating strategy for Georg Jensen: we’re very used to experiencing the corporate’s objects behind glass. Right here within the backyard, although, a baby was simply enjoying with a silver object and throwing it round. That wasn’t on my bingo card for at this time. I think about it is crucial so that you can open up the home on this method.
PG: There’s, I hope, a humility [that reflects] the spirit of our founder as somebody who invited so many various varieties of individuals into the atelier. And that is additionally my expertise of working on this home, alongside artisans; this can be a group, and these relationships, these conversations are literally imperfect, similar to a household is. There are moments whenever you love one another. There are moments whenever you’re arguing about one thing. However in the end, it is a house for dialogue.
That can also be one thing that’s essential for me, to be a catalyst for dialogue; I feel that may be very a lot within the spirit of Georg Jensen and perhaps it begins to inform completely different tales about what the home is.
‘There’s a number of humour and sudden moments in silver that yow will discover within the archive’
Paula Gerbase
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Georg Jensen)
W*: Are you able to inform me extra concerning the video games you’re launching? Did they exist within the archive?
PG: They’re all new. We have conceived a number of woodland creatures which can be very a lot impressed by Georg Jensen’s personal childhood within the woods. And so, for instance, within the King’s recreation and the Ring Toss, the King is an smug toad, proudly cross-armed.
However we have now a historical past of many playful, small objects within the archive. There are lipstick circumstances, there is a flashlight, a silver wheelbarrow. There’s a number of humour and sudden moments in silver that yow will discover within the archive, [and that] impressed these objects.
Sterling and stone cube set
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Georg Jensen)
W*: What are the important thing themes that you are looking to discover by your position as inventive director?
PG: Motion, lightness of spirit, curiosity. I additionally take into consideration eccentricity lots, which is probably not one thing that one may at present relate to Georg Jensen, however once I take a look at the historical past, there’s an enormous quantity of eccentricity. In fact, this home can also be proudly Danish, and so, for me, it has been an training in heritage and folklore.
And really, we’re right here [in our ‘Secret Garden’], close to the statue of Absalon, the founding father of Copenhagen: I noticed one thing fascinating and light-weight about placing one thing so foolish in an area that’s so full of historical past.
Absalon within the background of the ‘Secret Backyard’
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Georg Jensen)
W*: How do you assume the panorama of Danish design is altering, and the way may the longer term seem like?
PG: Every home is sort of distinctive, so I feel it is essential for the authenticity to begin to come by fairly strongly. That is a spotlight for lots of us – what our personal values are. Danishness is, in fact, a standard issue. However it’s not (for us, a minimum of) the one one. So discovering these pillars that make every home distinctive, and leaning into these will enable for a future that’s fascinating and fashionable, whereas additionally difficult the notion of what design might be – it does not at all times must be midcentury.
(Picture credit score: Courtesy Georg Jensen)
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