Time for Tea
Georg Jensen’s first significant silver collaboration in 25 years is a limited edition silver tea service,
designed by Marc Newson.
World-renowned Australian-born industrial designer, Marc Newson, has been commissioned by the 111 year old Danish design house, Georg Jensen, to create a tea service in sterling silver. This is the designer’s first collaboration with the historic Danish brand, Purveyor to the Royal Danish Court.
Representing Georg Jensen’s first significant partnership with a contemporary artist since its collaboration with Verner Panton in 1988, the Newson tea service will be offered in a limited edition of 10, stamped with an ‘MN’ makers mark. The design and engineering process took more than six months and included the integration of state-of-the-art technology with the handcraftsmanship of Jensen’s legendary silversmith through the inclusion of rapid 3D prototyping in the initial phase of development. The process was crucial to Newson’s exploration of shapes and experimentation with various possible technical solutions.
The Edition pieces require more than three months of hand hammering, and will be made to order in the company’s workshop in Copenhagen. The first set was forged by a third generation silversmith whose grandfather worked side by side with the company’s founder, Georg Jensen.
Bearing the familial qualities of a reductive sculptural approach, which is realized through the craftsmanship of Georg Jensen, the service is comprised of 5 pieces: teapot, coffee pot, creamer, sugar bowl, and tray. Sculpted with the designer’s signature mastery of exquisite proportions, Newson’s shapes evoke an impression of nature, as did Mr. Jensen’s inventive ‘organic’ forms, created a century earlier.
The teapot, coffee pot, and creamer are embellished with responsibly sourced mammoth handles, while the tray’s perimeter is wound in natural rattan. Newson exercises his affinity for the biomorphic outline by adding a near-invisible cut-out with sliding door to the tops of the tea and coffee pots. This gives the hand wrought, near-classic pieces a subtle yet significant suggestion of an ‘industrial’ solution, while presenting new challenges to the workshop as well as adding a modern contemporary paradigm to the Jensen oeuvre.
“Marc Newson was, for me, really the only choice to design a new tea service for Georg Jensen. Through his unparalleled, diverse experiences in industrial design, tackling such profound and elemental subjects as speed and motion, architecture, and the recording of the passage of time, and having begun his career as a sculptor, as did Mr. Georg Jensen, who else but Marc could bring to this domestic, modest and functional family of tea related objects the gravitas, the feeling of universality, the harmony of domesticity and ceremony?” – David Chu, CEO
Like those that came to the House before him, Newson joins the Jensen family on his own terms.
