This year’s 3daysofdesign — the design festival that transforms Copenhagen into an international center for contemporary design every June — was held under the motto »Keep it Real«. The focus: authenticity, craftsmanship and real encounters. Once again, the Danish capital became a driving force for a reflective, future-oriented design culture. In the second part of our review, we once again present some of the festival’s most exciting highlights — poetic installations, masterpieces of craftsmanship and creative collaborations that expressed the spirit of keeping it real in very different ways.
Charlotte Taylor — Home from Home
Home from Home is an intuitive exploration of the inner life of living—and how our spaces reflect the complex contrasts of everyday life. The installation explores how time, light and impulses shape our surroundings, creating a choreography of movement, mood and meaning. Objects gather where the light invites them—arranged through spontaneous gestures and lived habits.
The space is filled with dualities: calm and activity, retreat and connection, clarity and blurriness. Home from Home invites us to linger in this field of tension between stasis and change—and to reflect on how we live. At the Noura Residency in Copenhagen, London-based designer Charlotte Taylor has created an inhabitable installation in one of the two rentable apartments in Sankt Peders Stræde. There she brings together an eclectic selection of over 40 established and emerging designers and brands.
Tekla — Modern Romance
With Modern Romance, Tekla presented an installation during 3daysofdesign that combines textile craftsmanship, everyday poetics and historical references. Within the baroque Charlottenborg Palace, the label, which was founded in Copenhagen, staged a new collection that takes up delicate ruffles and broderie anglaise—an embroidery technique that is called »English embroidery« but has its origins in Eastern Europe in the 16th century. It was popularized by French traders in England in the 19th century and found its way into bed linen, nightwear and children’s clothing.
For Tekla, the collection began as a kind of research project and became a subtle homage to the diversity of this technique. The fact that the presentation took place in Copenhagen is no coincidence: the local community has always been a formative part of the brand identity. By participating in 3daysofdesign, says co-founder Kristoffer Juhl, the company not only wanted to celebrate its own Danish heritage, but also Copenhagen as a creative hub with international appeal.
Royal Copenhagen — Still Making Waves
Royal Copenhagen presented the Still Making Waves exhibition in its historic flagship store—, a tribute to 250 years of craftsmanship, tradition and innovation. Under the creative direction of Jasper Toron Nielsen, the history of the porcelain manufactory was reinterpreted: from the iconic three blue waves that have adorned every creation since 1775 and symbolize the Danish waters, to contemporary interior objects that bring the craft into the present.
The exhibition showed how traditional techniques—such as the artistic painting of the classic Blue Fluted Plain Collection or the filigree production of the Flora Danica series—have been preserved for centuries and at the same time further developed with new impulses. The focus was not only on the porcelain itself, but above all on the people behind it: the artisans whose knowledge and dedication still characterize Royal Copenhagen today.
Apollo Bar x Lobmeyr
Where tradition and craftsmanship are writ large, Lobmeyr is a must: Danish chef Frederik Bille Brahe discovered the Ballerina series from the traditional Viennese family business Lobmeyr by chance in a Parisian restaurant—and has been using it in his Apollo Bar in Copenhagen ever since. This encounter later gave rise to a joint pop-up collaboration: a gathering of like-minded gourmets with a love of form—now also during this year’s 3daysofdesign.
Since 1823, the Viennese family business Lobmeyr has stood for the finest hand-blown glass art. The wafer-thin glasses—with a wall thickness of just 0.7 to 1.1 millimeters—are created in wooden molds, whose steam protects the glass from direct contact and thus ensures a particularly smooth surface. Drinking set No.4 from 1856 is considered the forerunner of the modern wine glass and later inspired Josef Hoffmann’s Patrician series from 1917. [DM]
