Georg Jensen Henning Koppel Eel Dish 1054, Sterling Silver

Item #: GJ3522728

Discontinued / No Stock Remaining

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product information

Designer: Henning Koppel

Item #: GJ3522728

Dimensions: H: 5.51", W: 7.28", L: 28.74"

Material: Sterling Silver

Country: Denmark

The covered dish is truly a piece of art. This masterpiece has many of the qualities of an abstract sculpture. Henning Koppel did indeed himself regard his designs as sculptures: "I believe that any object first and foremost should be beautiful. To make a thing functional and practical is not as difficult as some may want you to believe. It is actually the easiest part".

Strict reason and rational thinking are behind the sensuality and voluptuousness in Henning Koppel's designs. At the same time however, the beauty of these shapes is deliberately unpretentious and natural. Similarly, the light reflection in the silver is a soft and muted sheen thanks to the gentle curve.

This is not a piece of hollowware you make after having finished your apprenticeship of 4 years. It takes many more years of training to be able to make this masterpiece—and mostly only 1 or 2 silversmiths in the workshop are capable of making the covered dish. When being trained in making the covered dish many hours of work are saved if another experienced silversmith can guide you and pass on his experience of how the silver reacts.

It takes an experienced silversmith about 500-550 hours to make the covered dish. Both the dish and the lid are raised from a flat sheet of silver by the same techniques as the Covered Dish 1026 and some of the challenges are the same and demand the same master skills and many hours of patient work with the silver. Silver is a very lively and soft material and a wrong blow with the hammer could create tension where it should not. This will cause some extra hours of work to straighten it out.

For the Covered Dish 1054 the challenge for the silversmith lies in the line where the dish and the lid meet—the lid must be flush with the bottom all the way—from one end to the other and on both sides this joint must be so perfectly smooth that you do not feel the transition when you let the palm of your hands slide from the top of the lid and down the sides to the bottom of the dish. This dish is 28.74" long AND the lid must fit perfectly whether you turn it one way or the other.

about the designer

Henning Koppel is responsible for what we have come to think of as "Danish design."

Koppel was an earlier pioneer of functionalism in design: his mission was to make everyday life products beautiful as well as practical. He was trained as a sculptor and began collaborating with Georg Jensen in 1946.

Henning Koppel is born to a wealthy Jewish family and showed an early talent for art, leading him to train in both drawing and aquarelle early on. He continued studies in sculpture at the Royal Danish Academy and later in Paris. His superb drafting skills, developed as a child, helped him in to produce outstanding product renderings of his designs. Even on their own, they form an exceptional body of work.

Like many Danish Jews, Koppel fled to Sweden during the Second World War. At 27, he returned and began working at Georg Jensen, which marked his start in jewellery, hollowware and flatware design. His first works – a series of necklaces and linked bracelets resembling whale vertebrae and microscopic organisms - were small masterpieces in imaginative modelling. Henning Koppel was in every way groundbreaking and his jewellery was unlike anything ever created at the silver smithy in its first 40 years.

When Henning Koppel died in 1981, aged 63, he had created an astonishing range of work: from stainless steel cutlery such as "New York" which found its way into the homes of millions, to magnificent one-off signature pieces such as the silver and crystal chandelier he designed to celebrate the 75-year anniversary of Georg Jensen in 1979.

During his life, he won many awards including the Milan Triennial, the International Design Award and the Lunning Prize. Accolades are important, but what means even more to us is that people still choose to wear a watch by Henning Koppel or to serve coffee from one of his pots. The integrity and appeal of his designs remain vital and undiminished.

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