Georg Jensen Four Light Candle Holder Pair

Spanish-born, Milan-based architect Patricia Urquiola doesn’t lack for commissions these days, and, unlike the work of many other high-concept architects, her projects tend to get constructed, envelope-pushing though they sometimes are. And when she’s not imagining covetable creations for contemporary furniture houses — including B&B Italia, Driade and Cassina, where she was named art director in 2015 — Urquiola makes headlines by designing some of the world’s most aesthetically ambitious hotels, such as 2016’s Il Sereno on Lake Como in Lombardy, Italy.

Born in Oviedo, in northern Spain, Urquiola grew up in a family that valued creativity. Everyone in the house, she says, talked and cared about design. She fondly remembers her mother going to London in the 1960s and ’70s and coming back home with a Mary Quant this, a David Hicks that. When it came time to go to university, Urquiola decided that her place was architecture school, first at the Polytechnic University of Madrid and then at the Polytechnic University of Milan, where she completed her design thesis — a felt carpet with a panel that connected to a home’s electricity source and telephone line so that you could plug, say, a table lamp and your phone into it — under the direction of legendary Italian industrial designer Achille Castiglioni.

Today, Urquiola has become a go-to when it comes to avant-garde product, hospitality and retail design, working with such blue-chip international furniture, fashion and hotel companies as Alessi, Baccarat, Salvatore Ferragamo, Kvadrat, Mandarin Oriental, Panerai, Rosenthal, W Hotels and Louis Vuitton, among many others. Her residential projects, meanwhile, though few and far between, stretch from such far-flung locations as Punta del Este, Uruguay, and Melbourne, Australia, to closer-to-home Udine, in northeastern Italy, where she designed the two-story, largely open-plan glass-and-cedar home of Patrizia Moroso, creative director of the family-owned design company that bears her last name.

Over the course of a long-term and highly productive collaboration spanning some 20 years, Urquiola has created dozens and dozens of Moroso-branded products. A chair from her 2001 Fjord line of seating, tables and poufs for the company sits in the collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and Moroso debuted (love me) Tender, her modular sofa system upholstered in jersey, during Milan’s Salone Internazionale del Mobile in April of 2014.

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For over a century, Georg Jensen has produced some of the finest objects in Scandinavian modern design, including silver tableware, serving pieces, home decor, jewelry and more, frequently partnering with leading artisans to expand its offerings and respond to shifting tastes. Known for minimal aesthetics that reference nature, the craftsmanship of this legendary Danish silverware firm has regularly married function with thoughtful and beautiful design.

Founder Georg Jensen (1866–1935) was born in the small town of Radvaad, Denmark, and began his training as a goldsmith at 14. After studying sculpture and then training with master silversmith Mogens Ballin, he established his own silver business in Copenhagen in 1904. By 1918, the company was successful enough to open a shop in Paris.

Jensen’s firm produced an incredibly vast range of silver objects, from serving dishes and barware to centerpieces and chandeliers. For his early work, which bore ornate floral details and other organic forms of Art Nouveau, Jensen looked to the splendors of the natural world. The 1905 Blossom teapot, for instance, was topped with a magnolia bud and deftly balanced on toad feet, while some of Jensen’s best-known flatware patterns included Lily of the Valley, introduced in 1913, and Acorn, which debuted in 1915.

Collaboration with outside designers, long before such partnerships were common in design, would lead to some of the company’s most popular and enduring work of the mid-century. Sigvard Bernadotte and Vivianna Torun Bülow-Hübe created collections, as did Henning Koppel, whose curvy 1952 Pregnant Duck pitcher is a Georg Jensen classic.

After evolving and expanding throughout the 20th century, Georg Jensen was acquired by Investcorp in 2012. Today, the company is a global luxury brand with more than 1,000 stores around the world. It continues to produce seductive new pieces, such as a tea service made with Marc Newson in 2015, as well as timeless heritage designs, including the relaunch in 2019 of the 1018 solid sterling-silver Tureen 270. In 2020, the firm introduced the Jardinière 1505. Sculptural and richly decorative, the never-before-realized showpiece is hand-hammered from sheets of the finest sterling silver and is based on a 1915 sketch from Jensen’s archives.

Find an exquisite collection of Georg Jensen serveware, ceramics, silver and glass today on 1stDibs.