HANS HANSENHans Hansen opened a goldsmith shop in 1906 in Kolding, Denmark. Before that he worked as a silversmith at Carl M. Cohr which was well known for its flatware. Hans Hansen slowly became one of the premier silverware and jewellery firms in Denmark. Almost all of the initial designs were by Hans Hansen. His son, Karl Gustav Hansen was the next major designer for the Hansen firm. Karl Gustav Hansen, similar to many of the major Danish jewellery designers was, in addition to being trained as a silversmith, first trained as a sculptor. The Hans Hansen smithy was one of the Denmark's most important and prestigious ateliers. After the elder Hansen passed away his son, Karl Gustav,...
GEORG JENSENBorn in 1866, the son of a knife grinder in the town of Raadvad just to the north of Copenhagen. Jensen began his training in goldsmithing at the age of 14 in Copenhagen. His apprenticeship, with the firm Guldsmet Andersen, ended in 1884 and this freed young Georg to follow his artistic interests. From childhood, Jensen had longed to be a sculptor and he now pursued this course of study at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. He graduated in 1892 and began exhibiting his work. Although his is clay sculpture was well received, making a living as a fine artist proved difficult and he turned his hand to the applied arts. First as a modeller at the...
Tone Vigeland (born 1938) trained at the Norwegian National College of Art and Design (NCAD), and was apprenticed to PLUS Designs (Fredrikstad, Norway) from 1959 – 61, when she set up her own workshop. She continued to design for Plus, and the company continued to market all her innovative and successful series throughout the 1960s. Much of this was exported.Vigeland’s most famous earrings from this period are called ‘Sling’, they sit around the ear without the help of posts, hooks, screws or clips. In the 60s, Tone Vigeland was very obviously working in the Scandinavian Design tradition. Some of her early works bear witness of a strong influence from the Swedish artist Torun Bülow-Hübe who was working for the Georg...
DAVID-ANDERSEN The company was founded in Christiania (now Oslo), Norway by David Andersen in 1876. Andersen (1843-1901) was a gold and silversmith with a keen sense of quality and the high standards of his workmanship brought early success. By 1888, Andersen was able to expand his workshop into a steam powered plant and a second retail location was opened in Oslo in 1892. David Andersen died in 1901 and his son, Arthur Andersen, took the reins of the firm. Arthur instituted some important changes, he decided to hyphenate the family name to David-Andersen, and as chief designer, he introduced the use of enameling on the company's gold and silver jewelry and holloware. The new line was so successful that...
