Bowl 19A

The Louvre Bowl – so called since the Musée des Arts Décoratifs at the Musée du Louvre in Paris acquired this bowl for their permanent collection in 1914.

The Louvre Bowl is one of Georg Jensen’s most internationally famous pieces. It has been acquired by numerous museums around the world. It often features in advertisements in international journals, and in Denmark it was one of the motifs when the Danish Postal Authorities celebrated Danish design by using outstanding products as motifs on Danish stamps.

As with most of Georg Jensen’s designs, the bowl is in the Art Nouveau style with the characteristic ornamental curved lines, organic structures, decorative ornaments of flora and fauna, and the use of honest and skilfully crafted materials. True to Georg Jensen’s characteristic restraint, decoration is limited to the middle section of leaves and beads, leaving the rest of the bowl adorned only by the distinctive hammered surface.

The bowl is a brilliant conception: the way it appears to hover weightlessly on a base of leaves is a beautiful illustration of Georg Jensen’s ability to unite “fine art” with “arts and crafts.” This fruit bowl is a small sculpture in itself and clearly demonstrates the subtle effect of the hammered surface.

The base of leaves and beads consists of twelve individual pieces with a total of twenty-four beads, which have been filed and polished to a perfectly smooth surface. The pieces are then soldered onto the base one by one. The challenge for the silversmith lies in ensuring that all twelve pieces are exactly the same height, angled precisely outward from the centre, and perfectly aligned both horizontally and vertically, so that the rim and the bowl soldered on afterwards sit flawlessly straight.