RISOM CATALOGS & PRICE LIST
Contemporary Furniture for Business
& Residential Interiors
Jens Risom
Jens Risom: RISOM CATALOGS & PRICE LIST [Contemporary Furniture for Business & Residential Interiors: spine title]. Pleasantville, NY, Jens Risom Design, Inc. January 1962. Original edition. Screen printed portfolio case housing 4 Catalogs [all published]. Printed letter and gummed addendum included. Housed in original mailing carton. A fine set.
[4] 8.5 x 11 catalogs with screen printed stapled thick wrappers, illustrated with black and white product photography and measured specifications. All expected curatorial information present.
The four Volumes include:
- Catalog I: 20 pages of Dining Tables, Small Desks, Book Cases, R Cabinets and Bedroom Headboards.
- Catalog II: 16 pages of End Tables, Low Tables, Occasional Tables, Stools and Benches.
- Catalog III: 36 pages of Sofas, Upholstered Armchairs, Side Chairs and Arm Chairs.
- Catalog IV: 36 pages of Group 8, Group Nine, Desk Chairs, Conference Room and Executive Dining.
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.