Bowl 19A

The Louvre Bowl – so called since the Musée des Arts Décoratifs at 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 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. As characteristic of Georg Jensen, he shows restraint in the use of decoration which is limited to the middle section of leaves and beads leaving the rest of the bowl only decorated on the surface with hammer marks.

The bowl is a brilliant conception; the manner in which it seems to hover weightlessly on a base of leaves is a lovely illustration of Georg Jensen’s ability to unite ‘fine art’ with ‘arts and crafts’. This fruit bowl is a whole little sculpture in itself, and demonstrates very clearly the effect of the hammered surface.

The base of leaves and beads consists of 12 individual pieces with a total of 24 beads, which have been filed and polished to a perfectly smooth surface. Then the pieces have been soldered on to the base piece by piece. The challenge for the silversmith is that the 12 individual pieces must have the exact same height, a certain angle pointing away from the centre and at the same time they must have the perfect angle both horizontally and vertically as the rim and the bowl, which are soldered on afterwards, otherwise it will look lopsided.