ARNE JACOBSEN 71


the building’s guest rooms and other spaces, including the unforgettable Egg chair (1958), which fused seat, back and armrests into a unified whole. Other designs from the SAS hotel include the refined foam-covered and upholstered lounge chair Swan; the teardrop- shaped dressing table chair Drop (1958); the polystyrene and tubular steel Pot, which graced the hotel’s elegant orchid garden; the lesser-known Giraffe, a curious ‘bastard of a chair’ with a polystyrene shell upholstered in light green and lined with strips of wood along its front edge; and the AJ Lamp (1957), which, with its cylindrical housing and funnel-shaped shade, struck an angular contrast to the organic shapes of the chairs.


Te organic design language used


for Jacobsen’s popular shell chairs was successfully applied to door handles, candlesticks, salt and pepper shakers, and drinking glasses. ‘Once you find a winning formula, you must use it,’ write Dickson and Lund-Larsen of Jacobsen’s design philosophy at this time. However, his unconventional stainless steel AJA Cutlery was poorly received by hotel visitors who complained that ‘you couldn’t get a pea up to your mouth using the fork’. Te cutlery was later used for the professors’ high table in St Catherine’s College in Oxford, the first of Jacobsen’s major building projects following the Royal Hotel. Whereas the hotel’s designs had been


characterised by innovation, plastic and organic forms, the prestigious Oxford college was ‘tempered by older virtues’ with wood playing a major role, notably in the Oxford chair, a very formal, high-backed chair made with laminated veneer and intended for the dining room. Te 1960s saw Jacobsen continue to


innovate, with lamps for Louis Poulsen, new furniture for Fritz Hansen, and the tabletop series Cylinda Line (1967) for Stelton. Made from stainless steel and with shapes based on cylindrical steel tubes, Cylinda Line offered a modern and functional alternative to traditional silverware and included jugs, coffeepots,


PHOTOS: © DORTE KROGH


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