Jørgen Kastholm
Encyclopedia
Jørgen Kastholm was a Danish furniture designer who worked closely together with Preben Fabricius
Preben Fabricius
Preben Juul Fabricius was a Danish furniture designer who worked together with Jørgen Kastholm. During the 1960s, the pair designed a wide range of pieces for the German Alfred Kill who had a furniture factory in Fellbach near Stuttgart.-Biography:...

 in the 1960s. The airport furniture he designed can now be seen in some 120 airports. In later life Kastholm was professor of design at Germany's Bergische Universität.

Biography

Born in Roskilde
Roskilde
Roskilde is the main city in Roskilde Municipality, Denmark on the island of Zealand. It is an ancient city, dating from the Viking Age and is a member of the Most Ancient European Towns Network....

, Kastholm first trained as a smith but soon turned to furniture design. He attended the School for Interior Design in Copenhagen where he studied under Finn Juhl
Finn Juhl
Finn Juhl was a Danish architect, interior and industrial designer, most known for his furniture design. He was one of the leading figures in the creation of "Danish design" in the 1940s and he was the designer who introduced Danish Modern to America.-Early life and education:Finn Juhl was born on...

. At the beginning of the 1960s, working in Lebanon, he was inspired to design the Scimitar Chair. He also furnished the SAS office there, the start of airport furniture designs which today can be seen in 120 airports worldwide.

It was while studying at the Design School that Kastholm met cabinetmaker Preben Fabricius who became his partner for a number of years. They had a common approach to furniture design, never wanting to compromise on quality. Speaking of their partnership, Kastkolm commented: "We had the same basic approach, we both wanted to minimize. I had been to the United States and seen furniture by Eames
Charles and Ray Eames
Charles Ormond Eames, Jr and Bernice Alexandra "Ray" Eames were American designers, who worked in and made major contributions to modern architecture and furniture. They also worked in the fields of industrial and graphic design, fine art and film.-Charles Eames:Charles Eames, Jr was born in...

 and Mies van der Rohe and it inspired us. The simplest lasts longest. At school we had learnt that timelessness was an ideal."

In 1962, the pair set up a design studio in a Gentofte
Gentofte
Gentofte Kommune is a municipality in the Capital Region of Denmark on the east coast of the island of Zealand in eastern Denmark. The municipality covers an area of , and has a total population of 68,913...

 cellar without any firm arrangements with manufacturers. In 1965, they exhibited at the furniture fair in Fredericia
Fredericia
Fredericia is a town located in Fredericia municipality in the eastern part of the Jutland peninsula in Denmark, in a sub-region known locally as Trekanten, or The Triangle...

 where the German furniture manufacturer Alfred Kill noticed their work. Kill had a reputation for high quality but initially Favricius and Kastholm were not keen to design furniture for factory production. Only when Kill offered them DM 2,500 a month each, with no preconditions, did they agree to work for him. They travelled to Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....

 with their first designs for production in Kill's factory in nearby Fellbach. Their international breakthrough came at the Cologne Fair in 1966 when they exhibited a whole series of office and home furniture leading to orders from ten large furniture concerns. Their minimalistic designs, both attractive and comfortable, were usually in steel and leather. The Tulip Chair, the Grasshopper Chair and the Scimitar Chair are among their most successful works. The Tulip Chair has become famous as Meryl Streep
Meryl Streep
Mary Louise "Meryl" Streep is an American actress who has worked in theatre, television and film.Streep made her professional stage debut in 1971's The Playboy of Seville, before her screen debut in the television movie The Deadliest Season in 1977. In that same year, she made her film debut with...

's office chair in the film The Devil Wears Prada
The Devil Wears Prada
The Devil Wears Prada is a best selling novel by Lauren Weisberger about a young woman who, freshly graduated from college, is hired as a personal assistant to a powerful fashion magazine editor, a job that becomes hellish as she struggles to keep up with her boss's capricious and demeaning requests...

.

The pieces of furniture they produced during their ten-year period of cooperation from 1961 to 1970 were so distinctive that many are still produced today as classics. As a result of disagreements, the pair decided to terminate their cooperation in 1970.

Kastholm was later appointed professor at Bergische Universität in Wuppertal
Wuppertal
Wuppertal is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located in and around the Wupper river valley, and is situated east of the city of Düsseldorf and south of the Ruhr area. With a population of approximately 350,000, it is the largest city in the Bergisches Land...

 near Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...

 where he taught design for a number of years. He also designed furniture at his office in Germany as well as in his house in the mountains on the island of Majorca. He returned to Denmark shortly before he died in June 2007.

Awards

Together with Peter Fabricius, Kastholm was awarded the first German Gute Form prize for the FK Bucket Seat (1969). On two occasions (1972 and 1977), he won Stuttgart Design Center's first prize. In 1973, he was awarded the Grand Prix by the Modern Art Museum of Brazil.
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