In partnership with Georg Jensen

With the launch of Weft, Georg Jensen’s latest collection and the first under creative director Paula Gerbase, RUSSH Editor in Chief Jess Blanch speaks with the British designer about returning to the Danish house’s sculptural roots while shaping a new language for its future.

JB: You’ve spoken about spending a lot of time in the Georg Jensen archive when you first joined. What struck you there, and how did that lead to Weft?

PG: For the first months when I joined, I was really trying to absorb as much as possible of the history of Georg Jensen. I kind of knew it peripherally, but not in a way that felt like I really knew it intimately. So, I wanted to get acquainted more intimately with the House and its founding values. I spent a lot of time with the archive, studying it and understanding where we come from, and a few things struck me that led to Weft.

The first being that we're a House founded by a sculptor. That is quite an unusual way for a brand to start. Most brands start historically with craftspeople, entrepreneurs, designers, or dressmakers. And here we have a House founded by a sculptor, who then subsequently trained as a silversmith. Most people don't know that Georg Jensen was a goldsmith first and foremost, then went on to train at the Royal Academy in sculpture, and then trained in silversmithing. When you look at those original pieces, they're so distinctively different to what we perhaps know, over the last 25 years, as Georg Jensen.

I think the perception of Georg Jensen is a sculptural piece of jewellery – and perhaps there’s a reductive understanding of what sculptural means. Usually what people mean is: minimalist, quite bold, organic forms and very static. You could put a piece on a table, and it could essentially be a piece of sculpture. But when you look at Georg Jensen's original work in jewellery and accessories, there is so much intricacy, negative space and movement. And almost mobile-like qualities to the work. There's a lot of silver wire filigree detailing. There was a lot of volume, but not volume in a way that feels opaque. There's a playfulness and a lightness of touch that perhaps in the last 25 years has not really been addressed. That struck me as something that felt super modern and relevant to revisit now.

When you look at the artists and makers who have come through the House, so many have also tackled this idea of silver wire. Of course, Georg Jensen himself, then in the Art Deco period you had detailing around hollowware and jewellery with silver wire. Then you look at mid-century, when Henning Koppel started doing those incredible silver carafes that everybody knows, with silver wire around the handles.

It became something I could see was a pattern in the curiosity of the makers who have come through. That sparked my interest in seeing if we could look at that very humble starting point and create something that might feel modern and timeless but could also frame the woman I see as the Georg Jensen character: someone who is very dynamic, always in flux, always in movement. Someone who has a very individual sense of themselves. Someone who's interested in arts and culture but is not defined by the things they wear. So, how do you create jewellery that stands on its own when it's worn, rather than just on a table?

“If I wanted to create objects that lived on their own on a pedestal, I would have gone into fine arts. What has always driven me to design is the absolute privilege of being part of people's intimate space and their daily routine, and being a silent part of that.”

JB: I love how you define that woman. When you think of Danish design, you often think of minimalism and restraint, but there's something very emotional and dynamic about this collection as well.

PG: I think there are also more conceptual ideas that came from studying the archive. There's a lot around this idea of strength and fragility, and silver as a material: how a material develops through time and oxidises through wear.

I was interested in creating pieces that perhaps you can control, but also not control. Each piece is going to evolve very distinctly depending on the wearer. Silver is a material that is alive. It evolves and changes in colour. There's a tendency to think everything needs to be highly polished at all times. But for me, the pieces that I own, or that people I love own, that have been weathered are the pieces that speak not just of the original design, but also of the life lived wearing those pieces.

I was looking at the construction of Weft to have something that would almost never be perfect once it started to be worn. There's beauty in celebrating that controlled imperfection rather than always striving to be totally pristine, because that's just not real life.

JB: You've spoken before about objects holding a certain power in terms of our daily routines. Is that very much in your mind when you're designing?

PG: Always. If I wanted to create objects that lived on their own on a pedestal, I would have gone into fine arts. What has always driven me to design is the absolute privilege of being part of people's intimate space and their daily routine, and being a silent part of that. Design allows you to be part of how people define themselves – whether that's through a silhouette or how they frame the way they feel on any given day. And objects of quality that last a long time do imbue someone's moments.

I think we all have that jacket that was inherited, borrowed or stolen from someone we love, and that object has that energy. Or a ring that was inherited, or a set of cutlery you bought when you were in Paris. It's more than an object. It's lived experience. Sometimes that's in the big, grand moments of life, but what interests me most are those small gestures of the everyday that these objects can reframe. Jewellery is very much in that. It's deeply intimate.

JB: Your path from tailoring and fashion into jewellery isn't necessarily a traditional one. Has that allowed you to approach Georg Jensen in a different way?

PG: It seems like a strange jump, right? Fashion to jewellery or homewares. But so much of the process is the same. I've always worked with craftspeople – whether in a tailor's workshop or a lace-making factory – and I developed textiles for most of my career. So, I'm very used to being in environments where you're solving technical challenges.

I find restrictions interesting because I see them as opportunities. That's maybe what I was trying to create with Weft: a system or a code that was also a system for how things are put together. If you give yourself a set of rules, sometimes you can be even more creative. Whereas if you have the entire world open to you, that can actually feel quite debilitating.

JB: Freedom within boundaries.

PG: Yes, which is what tailoring is in the end. It's about really owning and being a master of your tools and your craft and then, because of that, having total freedom. You need to go through the process of deeply understanding how something is made, and then you can do a shoulder that is peaked, or a deconstructed jacket, or you can break those rules.

With Weft, that was also about laying out a set of rules that would allow us to expand it in future to the extremes, and then rein it back in, in more subtle ways.

JB: This is the first chapter of your first collection, with another to come. What is the larger story you're hoping to build at Georg Jensen?

PG: What I've come to realise is that Georg Jensen himself always sought to create an environment which was quite experimental. He was quite pioneering in this idea of collaboration. It wasn't collaboration as we've known it in the last 30 years, where it's, "So-and-so, come here, design this bag, and then off you go." It was really about bringing people into the atelier, into the studio, and inviting them to play.

Within the first two or three years of founding the company, he was already inviting other makers, artisans and artists to work with him and his artisans to create. I would like us to regain a little of that generosity and collaborative spirit in ways that are more meaningful. To be a supporter of the arts and a supporter of creative talent.

I'm building a studio at the moment, with the archive physically at the centre and the studio around it. I think it's about creating an environment that is built around a set of values that goes beyond my tenure. I always think long, long term. People think about the next season, the next three seasons. I'm thinking: what's the next 120 years? What can my contribution be that goes beyond just a collection or an aesthetic and is more foundational?

I hope that will be my biggest contribution: to perhaps reinstate the ways of working and create an environment that allows my team to play, but also, once we've set that up, allows us to invite others to play with us.

“Taste is something that is distinctive. It's quality above all, but also quality of thought and integrity in the way something is made. And within that, the ability to have absolute freedom and dare to do something distinctive.”

JB: To create a sense of permanence. With the new studio, what's been important to you in creating that environment?

PG: When I joined, everyone was in different rooms. To begin with, I said, "I need all of the designers – from home, from jewellery – everyone together. Art directors, graphic designers..."

There's something that comes with being physically together and having that exchange. Someone working on a collection of trays might be sitting next to a graphic designer who looks at it and thinks, "Oh, that's really interesting. Why did you do it that way?" Then you have that dialogue.

We also have so much heritage in furniture and in the people we've collaborated with. I've been looking at residential work by architects like Finn Juhl, who was a collaborator of ours in the 50s, and seeing if we can bring some of those details that feel more intimate into the studio. That's how he designed Georg Jensen retail stores, actually. He designed them as residences. The product wasn't on shelves; it was lived with in a living-room or dining-room setting, and customers were invited to linger and experience the collection as they would at home.

There's an element of that in allowing the team to feel like they've found their home. And then, of course, the archive at the centre is vital. There's an opportunity for it to really be at the heart of what we do, to be a working archive that all of us can take advantage of: the architects, graphic designers, art directors, and designers.

JB: Were there pieces in the archive that you fell in love with, or that really surprised you?

PG: So many. There are things like the silver lipsticks that are so beautiful, and so mundane in so many ways. There's a silver flashlight. Then there are wild, eccentric things, like a cutlery set – I can't remember the name of it – but it's basically seahorses and fish mouths and shells. It's so extraordinarily camp, but in such a beautiful way. There's this freedom of creativity and eccentricity and daring.

To have a fork with two seahorses, a seashell and a fish coming out of the middle, and to understand that even the humble fork can provide a level of surprise and interest and joy. When we think about Danish design, we tend to think about function...

JB: Purity and restraint...

PG: Exactly. But there are also these moments of unbridled fun. Which, in my experience, Danes also have. They just keep it close to their hearts.

JB: There's so much conversation at the moment about taste. I like the way you frame it through the execution of these pieces, but also their wit, surprise, and joy.

PG: Taste is something that is distinctive. It's quality above all, but also quality of thought and integrity in the way something is made. And within that, the ability to have absolute freedom and dare to do something distinctive.

Georg Jensen’s latest collection Weft is available now.