Paying tribute to a pioneering designer - Nanna Ditzel (1923-2005) one of the most influential Danish designers of the 20th century
Nanna Ditzel reflects her postmodernist attitude and rebellion against tradition, which she brought to Danish design in the 1990s when she was well into her 70s. Despite her subjective starting points, Nanna had a remarkable ability to transform her artistic dreams into functional and purposeful designs that attracted worldwide attention. Her furniture designs were not only innovative but also had a contagious effect on the rooms they occupied, making people feel inspired to incorporate them into their homes.
Breaking the rules asking for imagination, motion and vision
The quote "THREE STEPS FORWARD AND TWO BACK STILL MEANS I'VE TAKEN A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION!" by Nanna Ditzel reflects her postmodernist attitude and rebellion against tradition, which she brought to Danish design in the 1990s when she was well into her 70s. Despite her subjective starting points, Nanna had a remarkable ability to transform her artistic dreams into functional and purposeful designs that attracted worldwide attention. Her furniture designs were not only innovative but also had a contagious effect on the rooms they occupied, making people feel inspired to incorporate them into their homes.
Born in Copenhagen in 1923, Nanna Ditzel was trained as a cabinetmaker before studying at the School of Arts and Crafts and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Throughout her career, Nanna was always inspired by the challenges of new materials and techniques, which led her to experiment with split-level floor seating in the 1950s and become a pioneer in various disciplines such as fiberglass, wickerwork, and foam rubber. She even designed the world's most renowned furniture textile, "Hallingdal," for Kvadrat.
From 1968 to 1986, Nanna lived in London and established the international furniture house Interspace in Hampstead. In 1989, she became closely connected with Fredericia, which led to a successful partnership resulting in the Trinidad chair, marking a turning point in Fredericia's history. Nanna Ditzel's uncompromising approach to design continues to influence Fredericia's culture and product development to this day.
For Nanna Ditzel, the aesthetics of the chair were just as important as its function. She believed that a chair's appearance should combine well with the person who sits in it and that some chairs look like crutches, which she disliked. Throughout her life, Nanna was awarded numerous prizes, including Denmark's highest design honor, the ID-prize in 1995 for "Trinidad," and the Gold Medal in the International Furniture Design Competition in Japan in 1990 for "Bench for Two." In 1998, she was awarded the lifelong Artists' Grant by the Danish Ministry of Culture, and she was also elected as an Honourable Royal Designer at the Royal Society of Arts in London in 1996. Nanna Ditzel's legacy lives on as one of the most renowned Danish designers, whose innovative and functional designs continue to inspire and influence the world of modern design.
Fredericia pays tribute to Nanna Ditzel - The grande dame of Danish design
Celebrating the 100th anniversary of Nanna Ditzel’s birth, the Danish design brand Fredericia pays tribute to their former main designer - a pioneering woman considered to be one of the greatest Danish designers of the 20th century - with a limited edition launch and new colours added to Ditzel’s most popular chair through time.
Breaking the rules asking for imagination, motion and vision
Fondly known as the “grande dame of Danish Design,” Nanna Ditzel (1923-2005) was one of the most creative, influential, and versatile Danish designers whose style never stopped evolving throughout her more than 60-year career.
Ditzel was a woman who challenged the comme il faut of design and succeeded in leaving an enduring dash of poetic lightness and artistic innovation in the Danish design tradition having deservedly positioned herself in the history due to her many striking and innovative designs across centuries and disciplines.
Being a generation after legendary architects and designers like Børge Mogensen and Hans J. Wegner, Ditzel also studied under the master architect and designer Kaare Klint at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts after graduating as a cabinetmaker and while studying as a furniture architect at the School of Arts and Craft. Even though schooled by Klint and his modern functionalism, Ditzel quickly broke out of the strict and formal design rules going for poetic and sculptural shapes rejecting the “masculine” ideals in favour of softness and rounded shapes. Experimenting with intense colours, new materials and the norms of space and design, she was challenging traditional thinking with her prolific output throughout decades. Leaving a clear mark on both private homes and public spaces and making her a distinctive voice and one of the most accomplished Danish designers spanning over 60 years as a designer from furniture and jewellery to silverware, glass and textiles being the first woman to design for Fredericia, Kvadrat and Georg Jensen.
In a strongly male-dominated furniture industry, Ditzel claimed her place. Together with her fellow student and later husband, Jørgen Ditzel, she already participated in the Carpenters Guild’s annual exhibitions during her studies as a furniture architect at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. After graduating in 1946, they establish their own design studio. Ditzel challenged the design orthodoxy and became a leading figure in the renewal of Danish design and the functionalist design traditions in the 1960s. As part of the new generation, including her husband and Verner Panton, they all distanced themselves from the general perception of good taste in Danish design, creating avant-garde furniture as space-forming architectural elements. Demanding imagination and vision, Ditzel’s designs were sculptural, experimental, and organic, with nature being a continuous source of inspiration.
When Nanna’s long-time husband and design partner, Jørgen Ditzel, passed away, she reinvented herself as a solo designer exploring new materials and designs. In 1968 Ditzel diversified again when she moved to London. While running her design studio, she also ran the acclaimed Hampstead store Interspace gallery with her second husband, furniture dealer Kurt Heide, owner of the eponymous design shop Oscar Woollens on Finchley Road. Being a first mover importing international design, Interspace was a gathering place for global design names.
PLICO CHAIR BY FABRICIUS & KASTHOLM by CARL HANSEN & SON
The Danish designer duo Fabricius & Kastholm were masters at creating honest design that beautifully highlights what other designers often seek to hide. With its visible joints, beautiful brass fittings and accomplished craftsmanship, the Plico Chair is a great example of this. The chair was first presented in 1964 when it won the Copenhagen Cabinetmakers' Guild Furniture Prize for its outstanding craftsmanship and expression.
The Danish designer duo Fabricius & Kastholm were masters at creating honest design that beautifully highlights what other designers often seek to hide. With its visible joints, beautiful brass fittings and accomplished craftsmanship, the Plico Chair is a great example of this. The chair was first presented in 1964 when it won the Copenhagen Cabinetmakers' Guild Furniture Prize for its outstanding craftsmanship and expression.
The idea behind the design was to create a chair that takes up as little space as possible when not in use while not compromising on comfort. Plico means 'to fold' in Latin and, despite its light exterior, the chair offers supreme comfort by virtue of its soft upholstery and features an adjustable backrest that can be completely folded. This ensures a degree of versatility rarely found in a lounge chair.
The Plico Chair is the second Fabricius & Kastholm design launched by Carl Hansen & Son following the introduction of the flexible and timeless FK Bookcase. On the thoughts behind the launch, Knud Erik Hansen, CEO of Carl Hansen & Son, says: "Fabricius & Kastholm were masters at combining the highest quality materials with sublime craftsmanship, which perfectly matches Carl Hansen & Son's DNA. The Plico Chair and FK Bookcase were created for the very same exhibition in 1964 and complement each other beautifully with their natural materials and honest design. We are therefore delighted and proud to have added another masterpiece from Fabricius & Kastholm to our collection of design classics."
About Carl Hansen & Son's relaunch of the Plico Chair, Thomas Kastholm, the son of Jørgen Kastholm, says: "The chair was a turning point in my father's work and proved to be a precursor to an international career in furniture design. I know the chair from my childhood - I played under, over, and on it, and I've always liked it. I'm therefore delighted that the chair is now being given a new lease of life."
Knud Erik Hansen, CEO of Carl Hansen & Son, concludes: "The Plico Chair is an extremely versatile piece of furniture - not only in its function of being a foldable lounge chair, but also in its appearance, and it fits elegantly into the living room, the cottage, and the hotel room and lobby. It is a comfortable and cosy chair to sit in with a good book and a cup of coffee."
PLICO CHAIR WILL BE IN STORES FROM AUGUST 2021.
PRODUCT INFO
Recommended retail price
FK10 Plico Chair, high back: 2102,- EUR ex. VAT
FK11 Plico Chair, low back: 1861,- EUR ex. VAT
Dimensions (cm)
FK10 Plico Chair, high back
Seat height: 37 Height: 93.5 Depth: 85 Width: 74
FK11 Plico Chair, low back
Seat height: 37 Height: 74 Depth: 85 Width: 74
Materials
Frame: FSC-certified oak (FSC C135991), oil/white-oil
Armrests: Saddle leather
Seat and back: Canvas and linen canvas
Fittings: Brass
For more information, please visit: https://www.carlhansen.com/da-dk
A feeling called Home - City Home Collective
BRABBU is a design brand that reflects an intense way of living, bringing fierceness, strength and power into an urban lifestyle. With a diverse range of furniture, casegoods, upholstery, lighting and rugs, and through sensory design, they pass on a unique experience in every product that they design and produce. Assuming that home is a lot more than a space, City Home Collective, the company responsible for this Park City House, wanted to do something exceptional with this project, creating a meaningful feeling to the client: a place where he belongs.
BRABBU is a design brand that reflects an intense way of living, bringing fierceness, strength and power into an urban lifestyle. With a diverse range of furniture, casegoods, upholstery, lighting and rugs, and through sensory design, they pass on a unique experience in every product that they design and produce. Assuming that home is a lot more than a space, City Home Collective, the company responsible for this Park City House, wanted to do something exceptional with this project, creating a meaningful feeling to the client: a place where he belongs.
The prime objective of this design firm is to match people with unique spaces, working with high-skilled designers, such as Helena Morozoff, the senior designer responsible for this Park City project, who prospects smart design with no boundaries.
As a result, the strategy here was to let the material drive the design, always opting for the most comfortable furnishing, choosing and combining materials that speak to each other, which made this warm, tactile and visual feeling of a retreat possible.
This perfect combination of neutral tones and patterns, contributed to the arising of this cosy and monochromatic space, filled with elegance and uniqueness, allowing the space to evolve over the time.
In a nutshell, City Home Collective believes that “life is better when you love where you live”, so they designed this house as the perfect place to relax, reconnect and recharge. And that is why home is so much more than a space, it is definitely a feeling.
For more information, please visit: www.brabbu.com
Meridiani presents ‘Storie di case’, the precious book that embodies the company's ability to create versatile collections
Meridiani presents ‘Storie di case’, the precious book that embodies the company's ability to create versatile collections, reflecting the personality of houses and their inhabitants. ‘Storie di case’ is a new book that depicts the various design solutions offered by the furniture manufacturer, founded in 1996 and led since day one by the artistic director and designer Andrea Parisio.
Places to live and protect our memories,
places inhabited by people and objects,
where each detail embodies the story of who we are.
Meridiani homes are homes with a perfectly recognizable style, yet ones whose details express the individual personalities of the people who inhabit them. ‘Storie di case’ is a new book that depicts the various design solutions offered by the furniture manufacturer, founded in 1996 and led since day one by the artistic director and designer Andrea Parisio.
For this project, the company has collaborated with four stylists and four photographers, each one having interpreted and immortalized the brand and its collections in different settings, adding a personal artistic touch. Four stories for four locations, each one with its own lifestyle, in which the innate versatility and ability of Meridianifurniture to interpret different contexts give rise to unique spaces. The interior design projects extend from the living room to the bedrooms, offering a complete vision of the home as a synthesis between interior architecture and furniture.
Context is what transforms a product into a unique experience. But timeless objects have a role to play too, outliving trends and fashions while bringing the character to their surroundings. For this reason, Meridiani has consistently designed its collections while thinking of interiors as ‘clothing’, something to be worn.
As such, ‘Sara's shadow’ became a tale of sophisticated style, a home with a distinct personality in which each detail speaks its own refined language, also through the uniform, the neutral colour palette in the tones of grey, white and brown.
‘The Light of the sunset’ is the realm of eclectic personalities who live amid sophisticated furniture and artwork, daring features and bold colours, in an exercise of contemporary design and comfortable spaces. The residence of the chapter ‘A whole week to themselves’ perfectly embodies the dialogue between interior and exterior, a vivacious space with clean, essential, yet decisive elements that capture the cosmopolitan taste of the inhabitants.
Marble, gold details and finely decorated fabric are the classic features of the home seen in ‘Milo's future,’ revisited with an au courant touch that balances rigour and lightness, traditional craftsmanship and innovation.
The relationship between rooms and products is made possible not only by the design of the furniture but also by the materials and the vast, varied textile collection, which has distinguished the brand since the beginning: materials that dress objects and transform spaces, creating unique, personalized results.
All of this made possible by quality, artisan skills, technical expertise and in-depth knowledge of the materials, which are the pillars of the brand and its collections, exquisite tributes to the exclusivity of the made-in-Italy products.
For more information, please visit: www.meridiani.it
Ditzel Lounge Chair Sheepskin Edition
Ditzel Lounge Chair is a modern take on the traditional, comfortable chair, offering a stylish seating solution for private residences to more public venues, such as hotel lobbies and executive suites, upscale lounges, reception areas and the like. Now available in white sheepskin with legs made of walnut wood.
Adding an extra layer of comfort to one of their classics, Fredericia now introduces the Ditzel Lounge Chair in a new version, fully upholstered with the softest sheepskin on beautiful legs made of walnut wood.
The Ditzel Lounge Chair is available in stores from October 2020.
Nanna Ditzel was truly an extraordinary woman. Incredibly talented, with a magnetic personality and a relentless drive. When Thomas Graversen took over as Creative Director at Fredericia in the late 1980’s, Ditzel joined him as Head of Design. Their close collaboration and openness to experimentation led to countless design awards and pieces celebrated all around the world to this day. Including what is arguably Ditzel’s most famous piece, the Trinidad Chair. She applied her brilliant creative mind to other disciplines, such as jewellery, tableware and cabinet making as well as textiles for famous design firms, such as Kvadrat. Boasting a career that began as part of the mid-century Danish Modern movement, she was a forward-thinking visionary whose work spanned more than 50 years.
Partnering with her husband Jørgen on the Ditzel Lounge Chair, they rejected conventional thinking and the assumption that a chair must be upright and rigid. Instead, by creating unconventional furniture that considered the various dimensions in a room, they believed that sitting in new ways would give people the freedom to think and live in new ways.
One of their most accomplished designs was the Ditzel Lounge Chair, designed in 1953. With the Ditzel Lounge Chair, each line and curve has been carefully considered to appear beautiful from all angles. Providing a perfect fit to the human form and as well as exceptional comfort, due to its generous width, back support, armrests and upholstery.
It also lends itself to customised versions and countless colours. Despite its broad, self-contained dimensions, the chair is rather light and takes up only little space. Known for her rebellious spirit and never-say-never attitude, Ditzel was unafraid to push the boundaries of what was considered possible. To challenge the status quo with sculptural, vibrant designs that drew inspiration from nature. Her rebellious spirit is also revealed in the varying ways you can position yourself in the Ditzel Lounge Chair. There are no rules; feel free to use it exactly as you see fit. Throw your leg over the side, lean sideways, straighten your back or cross your legs – do whatever you need to feel comfortable.
Ditzel Lounge Chair is a modern take on the traditional, comfortable chair, offering a stylish seating solution for private residences to more public venues, such as hotel lobbies and executive suites, upscale lounges, reception areas and the like. Now available in white sheepskin with legs made of walnut wood.
MATERIALS
Shell in high pressured PUR-foam enforced with a steel frame upholstered in sheepskin with solid wooden legs.
Innovation and craftsmanship of MYDRIAZ
MYDRIAZ creates outstanding functional sculptures; it revolves in-between lighting and furnishings. The art piece creating the different effects in its substance as well as in its form. Their designs illustrate the junction where tradition meets innovation, and where elegance and the avant-garde unite. Which is the extraordinary philosophy of MYDRIZA, which is all about sensitivity, precision, and agility.
Founded in 2011 by 3 artisan designers - Cyril Kaleka, Jennifer Midoz, and Malo du Bouëtiez - MYDRIAZ specialized in the design and creation of bespoke furniture, decorative lighting, and monumental high-end brass installations. From the initial sketches through to installation, the designers are involved with the entire production process. MYDRIAZ creates decorative collections that combine lighting with brass and other high-quality materials.
Technical requirements and the choice of the finish. Is the heart of their approach to the overall aesthetic and the concept they believe. Throughout their creations, MYDRIAZ seeks to break down the barriers between art and craftsmanship by combining traditional manufacturing with cutting-edge techniques. Working at the crossroads between two disciplines, MYDRIAZ produces and edits outstanding functional sculptures.
The high technicality of their approach, from the initial concept to the carefully-selected finishing methods, produces an overall aesthetic that breaks down barriers between art and craftsmanship. By combing traditional manufacturing processes with cutting-edge techniques.
MYDRIAZ creates outstanding functional sculptures; it revolves in-between lighting and furnishings. The art piece creating the different effects in its substance as well as in its form. Their designs illustrate the junction where tradition meets innovation, and where elegance and the avant-garde unite. Which is the extraordinary philosophy of MYDRIZA, which is all about sensitivity, precision, and agility.
An innovative concept and timeless craftsmanship
MYDRIAZ imagines decorative elements filled with light, creating sculptures for residential projects and monumental compositions for boutiques, restaurants, or hotels. MYDRIAZ’s strength lies within the team’s ability to shape artistic approaches.
During the design phase, MYDRIAZ refines its initial concepts through the physical process of shaping and handling the materials. The excellent level of their knowledge is expressed from the birth of an idea up to the almost subtle finishing touches.
Materials at the service of creativity
The workshop’s content of choice is brass, a semi-precious metal of unbelievable richness. From black to golden, passing through nuances of brown, blue, green, and pink, it offers an incredibly rich color palette. Further enhanced by any marks or marbling, it is reinvented and rooted in a resolutely contemporary style. It can also be varnished, polished, waxed, brushed, nickel or silver plated, and even covered in a beautiful ceramic layer.
For more information, please stay tuned with our new issue which will be launch next week!
for more information and upon request, please check the website: mydriaz-paris.com