THE JOURNEY TO AMERICA
Jens Risom may not be a household name in his home country of Denmark, but it is in the USA, where the Danish furniture designer worked for nearly seven decades and introduced the Americans to the concept of Danish Modern. Several of Jens Risom’s furniture designs are now being re-launched, creating new opportunities to get reacquainted with the cosmopolitan pioneer who lived to be 100.
Many of us recognise the names of his fellow students: Hans J. Wegner and Børge Mogensen – as well as his teachers at the Danish School of Arts and Cra s, Kaare Klint and Ole Wancscher, but Jens Risom did not make a name for himself until he at a very young age chose to travel to the USA in 1939. The purpose of the trip was originally to learn more about modern American furniture design – but as Jens Risom would discover, that was a non-existent concept at the time. Instead, he made it his mission in life to show the Americans what modern Danish design was all about. Jens Risom stayed ‘over there’, and even though the Americans’ introduction to modern design was not exactly love at first sight as they were drawn instead towards more traditional and familiar designs, the enormous size of the country allowed the Danish designer to reach an audience that was ready for change. Jens Risom therefore became hugely influential in the transition from traditional furniture to designer furniture based on Danish Modern, and today you can find his furniture designs in the Museum of Modern Art, the Yale Museum of Art and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum and in many other places.
But the fact that the young Danish designer would travel to the USA and change the American public’s perception of what constituted good design was – and still is – was definitely not on the cards. Jens Risom was born in 1916 in Copenhagen, and although his father – Sven Risom – was a renowned architect, Jens started his adult life studying business at the Niels Brock Business College. His studies did not stop him from cultivating his passion for both architecture and design at the same time. Still, he decided early on that he did not want to be an architect; he simply felt that it was a profession where you could easily lose control over your work. Instead, Jens Risom travelled to Stockholm, where he found a job at the department store Nordiska Kompaniet in the early 1930s and was introduced to Bruno Mathsson’s bright Scandinavian design, among other things. His stay in Sweden motivated him to become a designer, and upon returning to Denmark he was admitted into the Danish School of Arts and Cra s, even though the school’s admission requirements for the furniture design programme included an educational background in joinery. Jens Risom himself said in several interviews with American magazines that it was a good programme and that he was very conscious of the point that the key was to develop one’s own ideas and design furniture that reflected a progressive
society – even though a lot of his studies were spent on measuring historical furniture.
In 1939, when the young Jens Risom was a year away from completing his studies at the school, his lust for adventure got the better of him. The 22-year-old design student booked a passage across the Atlantic with a goal to find out how Americans designed their homes, only to be shocked to learn that ‘modern design’ in the USA was as far removed from any his concept of modern design as he could imagine. It was in this unforeseen situation, surrounded by Chippendale furniture, that his entrepreneurial mindset came in handy: Jens Risom quickly decided that it was better to be a pioneer in a new, huge market than to be one of many aspiring designers back in Denmark. Jens Risom then embarked on his American adventure, and he never seriously considered returning home a er that.
The road into the American market was filled with obstacles, and his journey towards becoming a successful designer started with a few abstract textile designs. During his first two years in the USA, Jens Risom worked as a freelance designer, which put him in touch with some of the great American architects of the time such as Frank Lloyd Wright. However, it would be his encounter with the German immigrant Hans Knoll in 1941 that would become pivotal to the Dane’s future work. The two of them set out on a four-month road trip across the USA, visiting modernist architects and scouting the market for modern, functionalist furniture. By 1942, they were ready to launch Knoll Furniture with no less than 15 of Jens Risom’s designs, which included the legendary Knoll 652W chair made from wood and parachute webbing. This was during the height of World War II, and materials were accordingly sparse. Nevertheless, Jens Risom managed to create a furniture collection that united the best from the Danish design tradition with elements of the emergent American modernist movement. Their vision from the very start was to design furniture that not only had an aesthetic value, but also a functional and not least ergonomic and comfort value. The litmus test was whether you were able to sit in the same chair for a whole evening.
Almost immediately a er Knoll and Jens Risom had turned their vision into reality, the US Army set their eyes on the Danish designer, who was somewhat reluctantly conscripted into the US armed forces and deployed to Europe to fight in the war against Germany. He returned from the war to
find that Hans Knoll had married Florence Schust, who in Jens Risom’s absence had occupied the Head of Design position at Knoll Furniture. Florence Schust’s ideas on modern design – and not least materials – clashed with Jens Risom’s, leading to an inevitable parting of ways with Hans Knoll. With that door closed, another opened, and Jens Risom was now ready to begin his solo venture. In 1946, he founded the company Jens Risom Design with a range of new products that appealed to the American consumer. The design company grew explosively, quickly growing out of the showroom in Manhattan and into a big factory in Connecticut with 300 employees, own manufacturing of furniture and textiles, showrooms and exhibitions around the world. Once again, Jens Risom demonstrated an impressive talent for business and aesthetics. Under the slogan “The answer is Risom” and expert assistance from world-renowned photographer Richard Avedon, who took the marketing photos, he created a strong and sustainable brand, which in the 1960s also began to include office furniture. In 1970, Jens Risom sold his life’s work to dedicate himself entirely to designing, but even though he lived to the ripe old age of 100 and continued to design furniture into his early 90s, he reportedly lamented in his final years that he had retired too soon. However, he remained active as a designer and collaborated with other big names such as Herman Miller’s Design Within Reach, Ralph Pucci and Rocket
Gallery. In 1994, he also renewed his old partnership with Knoll, who re-launched some of Jens Risom’s original Knoll designs. In 1996, his native country made sure he knew he had not been forgotten by awarding him the prestigious Cross of the Order of Chivalry. In the USA, which remained Jens Risom’s base up to his death on 9 December 2016, he achieved a great deal of recognition as well. Today, he receives a large part of the credit for having revolutionised American furniture design. In his private life, the elegant designer married twice and had four children and 11 grandchildren. Today, it is his children and Form Portfolios who manage Jens Risom’s wide-ranging design legacy.