SPECIAL EDITION [Mobilia no. 62]
Jens Risom Publishers Offprint
Gunnar Bratvold [Publisher], Poul Henningsen, Grete Jalk, Ib Geertsen [Editors]: SPECIAL EDITION [Mobilia no. 62]. Snekkersten, Denmark: Mobilia, September 1960. Original edition. Text in Danish, English, German and French. Publisher’s offprint of the 20-page illustrated essay on Jens Risom originally published in Mobilia 62, September 1960. Multiple paper stocks. One fold out. Printed letter on Jens Risom letterhead laid in. Fully illustrated articles in black and white and some color. Wrappers light worn but a nearly fine copy preserved in Jens Risom Design, Inc. envelope.
10.25 x 10.18 magazine with 20 pages and one fold-out devoted to the production and promotion of Risom’s work, with two full-page Risom advertisments photographed by Richard Avedon. Jens Risom (Denmark, 1916 – 2016) came to the United States in the 1930's as a free-lance designer and later started his own firm for the design and manufacture of fine contemporary furniture. Unlike architect Alvar Aalto or Hans Wegner whose international influence remained rooted in Finland and Denmark respectively, Jens Risom emigrated from Europe to the U.S. when he was just 23 years of age. Like other Scandinavian designers such as Josef Frank and Kaare Klint, Risom continued to honor tradition in modern design, combining old and new in highly original ways.
Jens Risom’s career has spanned nearly sixty years. He began his study of design in the Copehagen workshop of Kaare Klint in 1935 and joined Ernst Kuhn’s architectural office in 1938, where he designed furniture and interiors. In 1939, Risom emigrated to the U.S. and in 1941 designed the first chair manufactured by Knoll. Risom described the chair as "very basic, very simple, inexpensive, easy to make." The chair was constructed with a birch wood frame and, because of wartime materials constraints, cheap but strong army surplus webbing and has inspired countless imitations.
Risom continued to create simple, well-crafted modern furniture with Knoll and George Jensen, but established his own design studio, Jens Risom Design, in 1946. The studio was acquired by Dictaphone in 1970 and in 1973, Risom became chief executive of Design Control, a Connecticut based design consultancy.
In the 1970's, he acted as a trustee of the Rhode Island School of Design. Now in his eighties, Jens Risom continues to be active and his work continues to reflect the Danish approach to modernism, with its emphasis on traditional values and the human need for warmth, beauty and simplicity. Modern American design owes much to his unfailing sense of proportion, commitment to practicality and insight into the forms of modern living.