Take Five. A series in which I empty my pockets and set out the things I keep going back to — magazines, hotels, books, restaurants, furniture and lighting brands — and try to say honestly why. It is not a ranking, and nothing in it is sponsored. Think of it less as a list of recommendations than as being handed the pile from beside my desk.

This time, the desk itself. I have spent more of my working life at a desk than at any other piece of furniture, and I suspect most readers have too. Yet it is so often the last thing chosen and the first thing compromised: pushed into a spare room, set against a wall, facing nothing.

It has also moved house. The desk used to belong to the office. Now, for many of the families we work with, it has to live in the home, where it is seen at the weekend as much as during the week. Before we draw anything, we map how a family uses each room. We use a technique we call heat-mapping to try and work out when there are too many functions crammed into one area of the house. If too many functions overlap, we call that area of the home overheated, or red.

The desk is very often what turns a room red. Which is why it has to be good to look at when nobody is working at it, and why these five earn their places.

A declaration before we begin: we represent all five of these makers, and you should read what follows knowing it. The closest interest is the 604, made by Ceccotti Collezioni, whose London showroom we run. I have put the five in the order they were drawn, from the 1950s to the last decade. Read in sequence, they tell a short story about what we have wanted from a place to work.

604 Desk — Mario Gottardi for Ceccotti Collezioni

The captain’s desk. Mario Gottardi was a Venetian architect who made his name at sea: between 1953 and 1966 he won the competitions to design the interiors of four Italian liners, the Cristoforo Colombo, the Leonardo da Vinci, the Raffaello and the Michelangelo. A sketch dated 1954 shows the 604 drawn for the captain’s cabin of the Leonardo da Vinci, and it was built two years later for a company in Verona. You can still see the ship in it. Furniture at sea has to be handsome and it has to stay put, and the 604 is both.

Ceccotti makes it today in Cascina, outside Pisa, where Aviero Ceccotti opened his workshop in 1956. A central body of four leather-covered drawers is framed in solid American walnut and set on a metal base in a bronze finish, with brass footrests. Small brass spacers hold the top just clear of the body, so it seems to hover. At 255 centimetres long it is not a desk for a box room. It is a desk for someone who intends to stay at it for decades, which is rather the point. With a new culture of sustainability slowly moving through all creative industries, the idea of looking hard for an heirloom piece that passes down through generations holds a lot of value. We look hard and buy once.

Office Desk — Bodil Kjær for Karakter

The one that floats. Bodil Kjær, born in 1932 and taught by Finn Juhl, drew it in 1959, and it was first made by E. Pedersen & Søn. She looked to Charles and Ray Eames rather than to her Danish contemporaries, and it shows. A thin steel frame carries a slim top with four drawers tucked beneath it, and the top appears to hover above the frame rather than rest on it. It has been called the most beautiful desk in the world, and also the James Bond desk. It earned the second name honestly, turning up in several of the early films, From Russia with Love among them, usually with a villain sitting behind it.

I have often wondered why the villains got it. I think it is because it is the desk of someone in complete control: nothing on show, nothing out of place. It makes the person sitting at it look composed, which is a great deal to ask of a piece of furniture. Karakter makes it today in oak or walnut, on a frame of powder-coated or brushed stainless steel, and it is the desk I would choose for a room that has to be a study by day and something calmer by night.

CH110 Desk — Hans J. Wegner for Carl Hansen & Søn

The unexpected Wegner. We think of Wegner as the master of solid wood — the Wishbone Chair, joints you want to run a thumb along. The CH110 of 1970 is something else. It was part of an office range, and its top, rails and two slim drawers are formed as one veneered unit and set on two flat stainless-steel legs. It is almost severe.

Then you open a drawer. The drawers are dovetailed, and one of them holds a small round-bottomed tray for the things you would otherwise lose. That tray is the whole of Wegner in a single detail. He could change material, change scale, change his entire vocabulary, and still be the designer who had thought about where you would put down your ring. Carl Hansen & Søn has brought the desk back into production, in oak or walnut on a stainless-steel frame.

Ventaglio — Charlotte Perriand for Cassina

The one she designed for her own house. Charlotte Perriand drew the Ventaglio in 1972 for her chalet in Méribel, in the French Alps, and Cassina now makes it as the 511. Ventaglio is Italian for fan, after the shape of its top, which is made of fourteen oak staves. It is a table first, and Cassina offers it for the dining room, the kitchen or the living room as readily as for work.

That is exactly why I love it as a desk. Perriand spent her working life arguing that furniture should serve the way people actually live, and in a mountain chalet the table where you write letters is also where you eat, play cards and spread out the map. The Ventaglio does not ask you to choose. For a family home where the study has been squeezed out, it is the most honest answer I know: a beautiful table that does not mind being worked at.

Out of Line Homedesk — Bieke Casteleyn

The newest here, and the most sculptural. Bieke Casteleyn studied in Ghent and Milan and set up her studio in Belgium in 2012. Her Out of Line collection followed in 2015, worked largely in cement plaster, and the Homedesk belongs to it: a desk in concrete on a stucco base, with two drawers and a softly curving outline that is never quite straight. Each piece is made by hand to order in Belgium and carries a small label signed by her.

After four desks that try in one way or another to disappear — floating, hovering, standing on two thin legs — here is one that sits squarely on the floor and is glad to be looked at. Concrete is not the material you expect in a home office, and that is what makes it work there. It reads as a piece of sculpture that happens to have drawers, which suits a desk that lives in the sitting room and has to earn its place at the weekend.

What the five have in common

A ship’s captain, a Bond villain, a man who needed somewhere for his ring, a woman writing letters in the mountains, and whoever is lucky enough to keep the Homedesk in their sitting room. On paper the five share very little: walnut and leather, steel and veneer, oak staves, concrete. What they share is that each was drawn for a particular person at a particular kind of work, and that every one of them looks as considered with the laptop closed as with it open.

That is the test I would set any desk now. It will spend more hours being looked at than being used, so it has to be functional sculpture in the plainest sense: an answer to a question of living that still holds the room when nobody is asking it anything. Choose it the way you would choose a dining table, not a printer stand. Think twice, buy once.

Decorex returns to Olympia London from 11 to 14 October 2026, and three makers from the Tollgard collection are part of it. Each works in a single material: crystal, stone and solid wood.

Fairs are loud places. Thousands of pieces compete for attention, and it is easy to walk the aisles and remember almost nothing. What stays with you is usually the work where you can feel the hand behind it: someone who has spent a lifetime with one material and knows exactly what it will do. Here is why we think these three are worth seeking out.

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Bomma

Light, blown by hand.

Bohemian glass has been made in the Czech lands for centuries, and Bomma carries that tradition into contemporary lighting. Every piece begins as molten crystal on the end of a glassblower's pipe and is shaped by hand, so no two are quite alike. Light passing through hand-blown crystal never looks flat. It bends, catches and scatters, and a pendant becomes something closer to functional sculpture: as beautiful switched off as it is switched on.

Find them at: Stand G50, Decorex, Olympia London

Alabastro Italiano

Stone that holds light.

Alabaster is one of the few stones that lets light through. Lit from within, the whole surface glows, and its veins and clouds become part of the light itself. Founded by brothers Riccardo and Alberto Ongarato in Padua, Alabastro Italiano pairs Italian alabaster with brass, leather and blown glass. The pieces feel ancient and modern at once, and because each slab of stone is different, every light carries a pattern that belongs to it alone.

Find them at: Stand D71, Decorex, Olympia London

RIVA1920

From nature to home, in the VIP Lounge.

In Cantù, just north of Milan, RIVA1920 have worked solid wood for more than a century, with a respect for the tree that runs through everything they make. At Decorex their furniture furnishes the VIP Lounge, selected by Claudia Dorsch Design Studio under the theme “From Nature to Home”. It shows how solid wood can make a room feel welcoming and sophisticated while staying contemporary.

The brand is close to our hearts. Earlier this year RIVA1920 launched Suiseki, a collection we designed together with Castellani. Its oval table sets a single slab of marble into a solid wood frame, on three sculptural legs. Seeing RIVA1920 at the centre of the room at Decorex is a quiet pleasure.

Find them at: the VIP Lounge, Olympia London

The thread that ties them together

Crystal, stone and wood are three very different materials, and the makers behind them share one instinct: let the material lead. This is how we like to furnish a home. Choose fewer things, choose them well, and let each one carry its own story. Pieces like these are made to be lived with for decades. They become heirlooms rather than purchases.

If you are at Olympia this week, we hope you'll stop by and see them. If you aren't, all three makers are part of the Tollgard collection, and we would be delighted to show you their work.

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To enquire about pieces featured here, or to discuss a project, contact us: sales@tollgard.com.

Take Five. A series in which I empty my pockets and set out the things I keep going back to - magazines, hotels, books, restaurants, furniture and lighting brands - and try to say honestly why. It is not a ranking, and nothing in it is sponsored. Think of it less as a list of recommendations than as being handed the pile from beside my desk.

A declaration before we begin. We represent all five of these makers, and you should read what follows knowing it. The order runs the other way round from the one you might suspect - we went looking for them because of how they work, and we have kept working with them for the same reason.

So this is a line rather than a list. It starts with an architect who could not make furniture, runs through the workshop that could make anything, and ends with two studios still working the same seam today.

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House of Finn Juhl

The one who was not a cabinetmaker. Juhl trained as an architect at the Royal Danish Academy, and in a generation where almost everyone came up through the workshop - Wegner, Mogensen, Kjærholm - that made him the outsider. He could not build what he drew. He had to find someone who could, and from 1936 that was the master cabinetmaker Niels Vodder. The distance between those two men is exactly where the work happens. Juhl drew shapes no trained maker would have proposed, because he did not know they were unreasonable, and Vodder found ways to build them.

The Chieftain, shown at the Cabinetmakers’ Guild Exhibition in Copenhagen in 1949, is that argument at its clearest. The seat and the back sit clear of the frame rather than inside it, so the leather reads as something laid across the structure rather than packed into it. Juhl was looking at Arp and at Henry Moore, and it shows. No other chair of that decade looks like it, and the reason is that he was drawing rather than making.

Juhl wrote that an architect “should strive for unity but not uniformity, and establish a complete thought process behind everything”. This for me translates into the ‘red thread’ that we weave through our own projects: a unifying design narrative that runs through each project, each piece of furniture that we design, and against which we weigh every decision.

PP Møbler

The workshop that was given the difficult jobs. PP Møbler was founded in Allerød, north of Copenhagen, in 1953 by the brothers Lars Peder and Ejnar Pedersen, and is still run by the family in the third generation. My reading of the Wegner relationship is simple: he sent them the designs that were hardest to make and let the straightforward ones go elsewhere. It began exactly that way. Their first work for Wegner was as a subcontractor to AP Stolen, building the frame of the Papa Bear - the part of the chair nobody else wanted. When the Johannes Hansen workshop failed at the start of the 1990s, PP took on that collection too, the Round Chair among it, rather than watch it disappear.

Which is why the catalogue reads the way it does. It is not a selection of Wegner’s best designs. It is a selection of his most demanding ones, and those turn out to be very nearly the same list.

The Papa Bear is from 1950 and is the friendliest difficult chair ever made. It is put together like upholstered engineering, and then the arms end in two small exposed teak paws. That detail names the chair, but it is there for a reason: a hand needs somewhere to land that is not fabric. Sit in one and you understand why a family keeps it for fifty years and re-covers it twice.

Malte Gormsen

The classicist working now. Malte Gormsen trained as an apprentice cabinetmaker, first with a small family workshop in Scotland and then with Niels Roth Andersen in Denmark, where the job was making Finn Juhl and Vestergaard Jensen pieces to the original drawings. He learned the trade with his hands inside the furniture at the top of this list, which is not a coincidence I can improve on. He set up his own workshop in 1999; it sits in Herlev, outside Copenhagen.

He built the business on interiors rather than on a collection - Noma, Geranium, Geist, 108 - and the collection came afterwards, developed over a decade with Space Copenhagen. The MG106 is a dining armchair in solid oak and paper cord, most of it worked by hand. Paper cord is an honest material to choose, because it cannot be faked and it shows every hour that went into it. What I admire is the restraint. There is nothing in the chair that is there to be noticed.

Vipp

From a bin to a kitchen, and then to a hotel. In 1939 a metalworker in Randers called Holger Nielsen made a pedal bin for his wife Marie’s hairdressing salon. He made three. The name is the sound the lid makes. That bin is now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which is a considerable outcome for a favour done for one’s wife.

His daughter Jette Egelund took the company on in 1992 and moved the object out of the salon and into the home. Her son Kasper runs it now, the third generation. The kitchen followed in the mid-2000s, then the bathroom, then lighting and furniture, and then, with the logic of a company that has never quite believed in categories, a building.

The 453 is Morten Bo Jensen’s swivel dining chair, a polished aluminium frame carrying a leather shell. It is the piece that shows what Vipp actually is. Everyone else in this list began with wood; Vipp began with metal and a mechanism, and eighty-odd years later it still designs like an engineering company that happens to make beautiful things.

Overgaard & Dyrman

The newest name here, and the one I would watch. Jasper Overgaard and Christian Dyrman met as students at Aalborg, went on to the Royal Danish Academy, and founded the studio together in 2013, before they had finished. Christian trained as a blacksmith and Jasper as a leather craftsman, which is the whole company explained in a single line: steel and hide, made by the two people who know those materials best.

The Circle arrived in 2019. Its base is drawn from a drafting compass - a trestle that opens rather than four legs that stand — and the chairs are numbered and made to order. The joinery is cut on modern machinery and finished by hand, and the studio makes no apology for either half of that. Nor should it. The workshops of the 1950s used every tool available to them; the romance about hand tools came later, and mostly from people who were not doing the work.

What the five have in common

An architect, a family workshop, a cabinetmaker, a metal company and two graduates with a forge between them. On the face of it they share very little. What connects them is that in every case the making came first and the style came out of it. None of these pieces is a drawn shape handed to a factory to solve. The Chieftain exists because Vodder could build it. The Papa Bear exists because someone would take on the frame. The Circle looks the way it does because one of the founders can weld and the other can stitch.

That is the Danish lesson, and it is still being taught. Malte Gormsen learned it from a man who made Finn Juhl’s furniture. Overgaard & Dyrman learned it by picking up the tools themselves. Between them, they are carrying on something that began at the Guild exhibitions seventy-five years ago, and they are doing it without nostalgia, which is the only way it works.

Five Danish answers, then, from one Swede who has stopped pretending to be impartial about it.

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Take Five. A series in which I empty my pockets and set out the things I keep going back to - magazines, hotels, books, restaurants, furniture and lighting brands - and try to say honestly why. It is not a ranking, and nothing in it is sponsored. Think of it less as a list of recommendations than as being handed the pile from beside my desk.

This time, five makers who work in solid wood. One declaration before we begin: we represent all five in our showrooms, and you should read what follows knowing it. I would rather say so plainly than be coy. The order runs the other way round from the one you might suspect, we went looking for these makers because of how they treat timber, and we have kept working with them for the same reason.

Solid wood is unforgiving. It moves with the seasons, it splits if it is rushed, and it records every decision made by the person who cut it. Veneer forgives; solid timber does not. That is precisely why it is worth the trouble. A solid piece can be sanded back and repaired by a grandchild, which is not true of many things.

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Van Rossum

The one that taught me patience. Van Rossum has been making by hand in its Dutch workshop since 1978, in French oak, and the timber is rested for years before anyone is allowed near it with a tool - first in the open, then in climate-controlled chambers until the moisture has settled where it needs to be. That sounds like housekeeping. It is actually the whole product. Oak that has not been given its time will move in a London flat with underfloor heating, and no finish will rescue it. They are also the best I know at end grain, cutting across the trunk so the growth rings read as the surface itself.

Ceccotti Collezioni

The one where wood behaves like a drawn line. Ceccotti works out of Cascina, near Pisa, and has been at it for some sixty years, turning solid timber into shapes that look sketched rather than cut. The tapers, the splayed legs, the way a back rail curves away from you - none of it is achievable in anything but solid wood, and very little of it is achievable by machine alone. I should declare the closest interest of all here: we hold Ceccotti for the UK and run their London showroom. I would still put them first.

Riva 1920

The one with the longest memory. Founded in Cantù, in the Brianza, in 1920 and now run by the fourth generation of the family, Riva passed its centenary before most brands manage a rebrand. What I admire most is where the timber comes from. Alongside wood from managed cuts, they work in ancient Kauri raised out of New Zealand swamps, in Lebanese cedar, and in briccole - the oak mooring posts pulled from the Venice lagoon when they are replaced, still scarred by the water. Finished in natural waxes and oils and nothing else. A table that spent its first life as a navigation post in Venice carries a story no showroom needs to invent.

Porada

The one that made me look properly at walnut. Porada was established in 1968 in Cabiate, near Como, with a chair-making tradition in the family that goes back to the 1940s, and canaletta walnut runs through the collection like a signature. Their strength is joinery you can read: the turned leg, the curve where two solid sections meet, proportions worked out in timber rather than imposed on it. If a client wants to understand why solid wood costs what it does, I put their hand on a Porada table edge.

Jeroen de Ruddere

The newest name here, and the only one who does not make furniture. De Ruddere is a Belgian maker of sculptural lighting turned from solid oak, walnut and mahogany - floor and table pieces where the timber is the object itself rather than a stand for a shade. He describes what he is after as ‘sculptural lighting that brings presence into a space: timeless in character, defined by architectural balance and an instinctive respect for natural materials’. He belongs on this list because his lamps read as well switched off as lit, which is as close to a definition of functional sculpture as I can give. We took him on this year, and I suspect he will be with us for a long time.

What the five have in common

In every case, solid wood is a decision rather than a finish. It costs more, it takes longer, it limits what can be drawn, and it obliges the maker to understand a material that was alive and still behaves as though it might be. What you get back is a piece that ages instead of degrading, and that can be repaired rather than replaced.

It is also the clearest argument I know for buying slowly. A veneered carcass has a lifespan; a solid one has a history.

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With a new culture of sustainability slowly moving through all creative industries, the idea of looking hard for an heirloom piece that passes down through generations holds a lot of value. We look hard and buy once.

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- Staffan Tollgård, Design Hunter, 2019

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These five are what that principle looks like once someone has made it.

Next in the series: My five favourite hotels.

At Focus 2026, Tollgard presents new work from Tollgård & Castellani -the design duo of Staffan Tollgård and Filippo Castellani - for Italian house, Riva1920, at the heart of a stand shared with De Castelli,  Jeroen De Ruddere and Ceccotti Collezioni.

Solidity and softness runs through every piece: functional sculpture, made in the studio's own hand, where architectural forms have their edges quieted and their presence softened.

Discover our new collection brochure here.

Wood. Older Than Architecture

Join us at theTollgard Showroom for Wood, Older Than Architecture - a conversation exploring the enduring language of wood indesign, with product designers Jeroen De Ruddere, Staffan Tollgård and FilippoCastellani, hosted by Pip Rich, Executive Editor of Livingetc.

‍Date: Wednesday 16th September, 4.30pm

Location: Tollgard Showroom, Unit 115, Chelsea Harbour Design Centre, London SW10 0XE

Please email rsvp@tollgard.com to confirm attendance.

Riva1920

Suiseki (水石) translates as "water stone" - the Japanese art of appreciating a naturally formed stone for the landscape it evokes, held in miniature and contemplated for tranquillity and longevity. Offered as a low table, a console and a dining table, the Suiseki collection moves Riva1920's language toward something more sculptural and fluid. Sharp edges are eased into organic shape. Monolithic, soft, harmonious.

Heiko 平衡) means balance and equilibrium. The Heiko dining chair is built around exactly that: structure and aesthetics in quiet dialogue. Sculptural and iconic, it is also grounded and refined, holding visual lightness alongside a chair that is genuinely comfortable to sit in.

De Castelli

Few makers understand metal the way De Castelli does. From their workshops in the Veneto, the house has spent four generations turning brass, copper and steel into surfaces with memory - oxidised, hand-finished, warm rather than cold. Two new pieces bring that craft into the collection.

Francesco Forcellini's Dorica sideboard lays the language of a classical column on its side: clad in metal, its front runs in vertical concave flutes that read as a quiet relief, opening on a polished steel interior. Adele Martelli's Light&Shade wall light sets two overlapping metal discs one before the other, the light glowing from the perimeter and the gap between -the metal doing the work of a shade. One grounded, one luminous; both unmistakably De Castelli.

Jeroen De Ruddere

Belgian designer Jeroen de Ruddere rests a softly diffused light on solid, turned wood, with his FL4 and FL5 floor lamps. The FL5 is a fitting close to the story. Its silhouette is drawn from a tree trunk: a solid, tapering wooden base in oak, mahogany or American walnut, carrying a softly diffusing fabric shade. Handmade and dimmable, it is architectural in presence and gentle in the light it gives - solidity and softness, in a single object.

Bieke Casteleyn

Some pieces arrive with noise; the Clover settles. Hand-built in troweled cement stuc - each one signed, numbered and unique - its soft four-lobed top reads like a cloud at rest on a single rounded plinth. Matt, tactile and quietly warm, it comes in a range of powdery tones, with an Edged option that traces the silhouette in natural stone or afrormosia wood. Two sizes, custom height on request. Familiar in feeling, new in form.

Ceccotti Collezioni

Alongside the shared stand, Tollgard brings forward five new pieces from Ceccotti Collezioni, the Italian house at its Centre Dome showroom. The standout is the Captain Hook wall clock by Guglielmo Ulrich - a piece of design archaeology recreated from a single archival photograph of his 1940s original. A perpendicular beam in solid American walnut holds a brass dial, its numerals enamelled by hand, hands and fixings in burnished brass. Part of Ceccotti's Masters Tribute, it honours the overlooked design objects of the last century - the solid, softened, in its most literal form.

One idea, several houses

From Italy to the Netherlands and Belgium, Focus 2026 makes the case for a single thread running through very different materials and makers. It is the same instinct Tollgard brings to every project: finding the röda tråden, the creative DNA, at the point where environment, architecture and identity meet.

We look forward to welcoming you to the showroom soon.

If you’d like to know more about Focus, please get in touch with our showroom team, they would be delighted to help you.

Email: sales@tollgard.com | Phone: +44 (0)20 8067 2123

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Last week Copenhagen opened its workshops, courtyards, showrooms, and historic townhouses for 3 Days of Design, transforming the city into a living exhibition of contemporary design. Over three days, we wandered between districts, stepping into spaces both familiar and unexpected, discovering the work of established names alongside emerging voices.

What stayed with us were not the loudest statements, but the quieter pieces - designs that revealed their value through thoughtful craftsmanship, material honesty, and longevity. A chair built to serve for decades rather than seasons. A cabinet designed to age gracefully alongside its owner. Lighting that treated illumination not as an afterthought, but as a material in its own right.

Here is our round-up of the brands and pieces that left a lasting impression.

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Vipp

One of the standout installations from the fair was at the Vipp Garage, where the Barcelona-based studio Mesura transformed the space into an ephemeral guest house. A steel framework wrapped entirely in a vibrant plaid textile extended from walls and furniture into the courtyard, creating an immersive environment that announced itself before visitors even stepped inside.

At its centre sat a conversation pit formed from modular Loft sofa sections, reinforcing the studio's exploration of home as a shared experience. The installation was accompanied by a limited-edition Vipp x Mesura Swivel chair, developed specifically for the project and carrying the distinctive material language of the installation beyond the three-day event.

Alongside the installation, Vipp showed the Swivel chair in its two newest forms, models **454** and **455**. Both bring a higher backrest and a more spacious seat over the original, developed for long days at a desk or in a meeting - the 454 sits 61.5cm wide, with a 50cm seat depth, on a polished aluminium base available with castors or gliders, upholstered in aniline leather (camel, black and a bosco green among the finishes) or fabric, with elastic webbing beneath for give.

The 455 reads as the more considered variant of the same family. Both are intended to pair with Vipp's Studio Desk.

Vipp also previewed a new, larger desk and two new striking dining tables.

Finn Juhl

The home of Finn Juhl is its own argument for why thoughtful design matters. Walking through the rooms, you are reminded that Juhl never viewed furniture as simply functional objects. Instead, he saw them as part of a larger conversation about how we live, move, gather, and find comfort in our surroundings. Every room feels carefully considered yet deeply personal, revealing a designer who understood that the best interiors are not staged compositions but lived environments.

At the Finn Juhl showroom, a new silver cabinet was introduced - a piece very much in the Heirloom register, made to be kept and handed on.

Formakivet

At their Nordhavn showroom, FORMARKIVET presented New Dualism - an exhibition that felt like a precise statement of intent. The Copenhagen design house has always worked in productive tension: industrial materials held to a refined standard, classic forms recast in contemporary language. That contradiction was most legible in the Cubio collection, which grew again this year with the addition of a bench. Cast aluminium, offered in raw or semi-gloss light beige, each bench develops its own patina over time - the brand treats the micro-scratches and surface variations as part of the material's character rather than something to be corrected.

Alongside Cubio, the Ion upholstered seating was shown in full. Dining chairs and armchairs in fabric families ranging from cotton chenille to wool bouclé, and the Marmacén home scent collection, a fragrance range drawing on the woody warmth of oud and benzoin with top notes of frankincense and pine, lent the space an atmosphere that felt imoressive and considered.

PP Møbler

During 3daysofdesign, PP Møbler invited us inside the Flagship Store to mark two significant milestones. The Circle Chair celebrates 40 years, presented with a dedicated focus on its demanding construction and refined details.

At the same time, the Papa Bear Chair marks its 75-year anniversary, shown in special variations and with new additions to the collection. Together, they framed an exhibition centred on material understanding, precision and the ongoing work in the workshop.

Malte Gormeson

At the Cabinetmakers Gallery in The Conary on Dronningens Tværgade, Malte Gormsen presented new work from the Herlev workshop, combining traditional cabinetmaking with contemporary production techniques. The result was a collection defined by precision, material quality, and understated craftsmanship.

Three pieces stood out. The Abar stool from the Skt. Annæ series by Space Copenhagen brought a sculptural simplicity that highlighted the beauty of the materials. The Trapeza chair by Christian+Jade offered a clean, architectural presence with carefully considered proportions. A taller version of the MG406 stool by Norm Architects completed the trio, extending the versatility of the original design while retaining its refined character.

Anour

At its showroom on Bredgade, ANOUR used this year's festival to deepen a single idea: light treated as a material rather than a fitting. The PARS series was the anchor - a modular system in natural onyx, each piece carrying its own veins and tones, paired with refined brass so the stone seems to hold the light as much as pass it on.

A-N-D Lighting

One of the most considered presentations this year came from Vancouver-based studio A-N-D, which used 3 Days of Design to open its permanent European home - a former commercial printing press in Copenhagen's Latin Quarter.

The three-floor space, titled North Quarters, felt more like an inhabited interior than a trade show stand: on the ground floor, pendants from the Contour and Pebble collections hung in a necklace-like formation above a 16-foot dining table by Canadian designer Christian Woo; in the basement, the original industrial surfaces were left largely intact, letting floor lamps and sconces speak quietly against raw walls; upstairs, rows of Column floor lamps anchored a contemplative room with an audio installation built around sound waves.

Founded by designers Lukas Peet and Caine Heintzman, A-N-D has always approached lighting as a long-term proposition - every LED across their range is replaceable, and the studio designs for a lifespan of 20 to 30 years. It's the brand we return to when a project calls for something that earns its place in a room rather than announces it.

3daysofdesign is Denmark’s leading annual design event, turning Copenhagen into a playground for creative minds.

Every June, Copenhagen turns its showrooms, courtyards and back-streets into a slow, walkable conversation about how we live. 3 Days of Design - now in its thirteenth edition - runs from 10 to 12 June 2026, with around 400 brands spread across eight design districts: Holmen, Nordhavn, Islands Brygge, Kultur, Rosengård, Kongens Nytorv, Christianshavn and Frederiksstaden.

This year's theme is Make This Moment Matter. A quiet invitation, in the festival's own words, to step away from speculation and pay attention to what design is doing now, for the way we live, the materials we use, and the things we choose to keep.

We come back each year because it suits the way we think. The brands we represent are makers first: workshops, family-run mills, cabinetmakers, glass-blowers. Copenhagen in June is one of the few weeks where you can see most of them in the same city, in spaces they have shaped themselves. Here are the conversations we'll be following.

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The Craft of Permanence: Wood, Bone & the Nordic Tradition

House of Finn Juhl

A pointed choice this year: Explore a program centered around heritage, materiality, and craftsmanship. At their flagship showroom on Gothersgade, the exhibition The Deviation is in the Detail, curated by Mentze Ottenstein, unfolds from Finn Juhl's belief that true character emerges through nuance and attention to detail. In collaboration with Sea New York, embroidered textiles introduce a new perspective on Finn Juhl's iconic furniture. At Edition Copenhagen in Christianshavn, the installation The Workshop offers a closer look at the making of Finn Juhl's furniture, as the entire space is transformed into a living production site.

The Deviation is in the Detail
Location: House of Finn Juhl, Flagship Showroom, Gothersgade 9, Copenhagen

The Workshop
Location: Edition Copenhagen, Strandgade 66, Copenhagen

‍PP Møbler

A double anniversary year for the Wegner workshop: forty years of the Circle Chair, seventy-five of the Papa Bear and the Flag Halyard. The newly redesigned flagship turns into a working space for the duration - cabinetmaker and weaver in residence, the Circle Chair shown stage by stage from raw timber to woven seat. The most significant moment is the first production, by invitation, of the pp101: a 1955 Hans J. Wegner side-chair brought into the catalogue for the first time, drawn straight from the archive in oak or beech with a hand-woven linen webbing seat.

PP Møbler Flagship Store, Bryggernes Plads 11, 1799 Copenhagen V. 10–12 June, 10.00–18.00.

Gemla

Sweden's oldest furniture-maker, established in 1861, still steam-bending wood in Diö, joins the Frederiksstaden district this year. The Gemla story is one of long, patient craft: bentwood chairs that have evolved across generations through quiet collaboration with designers including Sami Kallio, Norm Architects and Färg & Blanche.

Residence of the Finnish Ambassador, Grønningen 11, CPH.

‍The New Originals: Contemporary Makers Redefining the Object

Meridiani

Meridiani returns to Copenhagen on two fronts. The Meridiani Point at Rue Verte holds the brand's current collections in central Copenhagen, while Meridiani House - Christine Callsen's five-room apartment on Strandvejen in Hellerup - continues as a fully furnished residential setting, the kind of slow, lived-in showroom we always recommend visitors make the journey north for. Their reading of Make This Moment Matter leans, as ever, on materials and atmosphere.

Meridiani Point at Rue Verte, Ny Østergade 11, 1101 Copenhagen K. Meridiani House, Strandvejen 163, 2900 Hellerup. 10–12 June, daily.

Vipp

Vipp return to 3days, where Barcelona-based architecture and design studio @mesura.eu reimagines the idea of a guesthouse. Typically a place of retreat, it becomes something else entirely. At Vipp’s Copenhagen campus, the Barcelona-based architecture and design studio presents a vibrant new take on the Vipp guesthouse - transforming it into a bold, immersive experience.

Vipp HQ, Snorresgade 22, 2300 Copenhagen S. 10–12 June, daily.

‍Overgaard & Dyrman

Jasper Overgaard trained as a leather craftsman. Christian Dyrman trained as a blacksmith. They met at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and in 2013 founded a studio that fuses these two ancient crafts into furniture for the present. Every O&D piece is made to order, individually stamped and numbered. Their Wire Collection - structural steel and aniline-dyed leather - caused an immediate sensation at Imm Cologne. The Circle Chair followed, its compass-inspired backrest designed to be observed from every angle. Furniture conceived as both functional object and three-dimensional art.

Studio & Showroom (by appointment) Frederiksgade 1, 4th floor, 1265 Copenhagen, Kongens Nytorv District

Van Rossum

Founded in a Dutch workshop in 1978, Van Rossum has spent nearly five decades perfecting what solid wood can be. Their sober, timeless aesthetic is built on certified oaks and European hardwoods, handcrafted by artisans who regard each piece as both functional object and quiet sculpture. At 3 Days of Design, the brand habitually expands its frame - expect not just dining tables and chairs, but new moves into lighting, rugs and accessories, each material conversation anchored in the same measured, gallery-like restraint that defines their scenography.

Nyhavn 71, 1051 Copenhagen, Wednesday 10 June to friday 12 June 2026

FORMARKIVET

A new form for classic. Formarkivet are exhibiting at their Nordhavn showroom during 3daysofdesign. New Dualism, their 2026 exhibition, holds that tension beautifully: classic principles and modern sensibilities, each pushing against the other until something original emerges. One of the ones to watch.

Århusgade 128D, 1st–2nd Floor, 2150 Copenhagen, in the Nordhavn district.

‍Malte Gormeson

The Herlev cabinetmaker once again decamps to its Cabinetmakers Gallery at The Conary in Frederiksstaden - the kind of space where you can read the joinery from across the room. The Malte Gormsen Kollektion sits alongside pieces by Space Copenhagen, Norm Architects, Nanna Ditzel and Christian+Jade, all built in the Herlev workshop. The MG Sofa by Space Copenhagen has been shortlisted for Furniture of the Year, and is worth sitting with quietly.

Malte Gormsen Cabinetmakers Gallery, The Conary, Dronningens Tværgade 26, 1302 Copenhagen K. 10–12 June, daily.

The Atmosphere Makers: Light, Crystal & the Presence of a Room

Jeroen De Ruddere

Belgian designer who shapes sculptural lighting from oak, walnut, mahogany and solid bronze is exhibiting Meet the Family, presenting the complete collection of his handcrafted wooden objects and lamps under one roof for the first time. A quiet, architectural body of work; very much in the conversation we like to have.

Jeroen De Ruddere, Frederiksgade 1, 3rd floor, 1265 Copenhagen K. 10–12 June, daily.

‍Anour

Anour is Farsi for light. It is also the name that architect Arash Nourinejad gave to his Copenhagen lighting studio in 2007, and the word perfectly captures what his lamps do: they make light feel like a material decision rather than an afterthought. Working with some of the last remaining braziers in Denmark - artisans who keep a dying craft alive - Anour produces handcrafted pendants, floor lamps and wall lights in brass, copper and blued steel, each individually surface-treated using organic oxidising techniques. The I-MODEL, their first and most iconic lamp, has grown into a whole family. Their new PARS collection introduces modular onyx, where natural stone veining means no two pieces are identical. Design rooted in the past, made by hand, built for the future.

28A Gallery (with Kolon & Norm Architects) Bredgade 28A, 1260 Copenhagen K

A-N-D

A real moment for the Vancouver studio: A-N-D opens its first permanent showroom outside Canada, in a listed Copenhagen courtyard building that once printed paper. Three floors, three functions, and three new lighting series from Lukas Peet and Caine Heintzman - shown alongside earlier pieces in a sensory presentation that suits the brand's instinct for light as material rather than fixture. We've been following A-N-D quietly for a few years; this feels like the right moment to introduce them properly to our European audience.

A-N-D Copenhagen, Studiestræde 34, 1455 Copenhagen K. 10–12 June, daily. Opening party Tuesday 9 June, evening.

‍Bomma

Bomma fills Copenhagen's newly reopened historic Court Theatre (Hofteatret) with their Fragments of Light installation - handblown crystal chandeliers accompanied by live performances every 30 minutes. A spectacular venue for spectacular lighting. Christiansborg / Rosengård District.

Hofteatret (Court Theatre)

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Explore a map of our favourite brands

The festival spans eight distinct design districts. These twelve venues form a natural walking route through the city's most beautiful neighbourhoods - from the grand Frederiksstaden palaces to Carlsberg Byen and the intimate streets of Rosengården.

Kongens Nytorv

House of Finn Juhl: ‍Gothersgade 9, 1123 Copenhagen

Anour: Bredgade 28A, 1260 Copenhagen 18–20 June

Meridiani: Rue Verte, Ny Østergade 11, 1101 Copenhagen and the Meridiani House

Van Rossum: Framing at Odd Fellow Palæet

Gemla: Framing at Odd Fellow Palæet

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Christianshavn

Vipp: Snorresgade 22, 2300 Copenhagen

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Frederiksstaden

‍De La Espada: Esplanaden 8D, 1263 Copenhagen

Malte Gormeson: The Conary, Dronningens Tværgade 26, 1302 Copenhagen

Overgaard & Dyrman: Showroom on the 4th floor at Frederiksgade 1 - by appointment only

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Rosengård

A-N-D: Sankt Peders Stræde 45B, 1453 Copenhagen

PP Møbler: PP Møbler Flagship StoreBryggernes Plads 111799 Copenhagen V

Bomma: Hofteatret Court Theatre

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Clerkenwell Design Week returns 19–21 May 2026, and three of the houses we represent at our Chelsea showroom will be there. Explore our  short guide to where you can find Gemla, Eikund and RS Barcelona across EC1, and why we think each is worth the detour.

Each of these houses works slowly, with material at the centre - steam-bent beech, Norwegian wool and oak, hand-finished steel. They are not chasing the season. They are building pieces that will still feel right in a room thirty years from now, which is the kind of design we find ourselves returning to.

Eikund

A decade-long treasure hunt through Norway’s mid-century archive, now made afresh in Stavanger.

Founded in2016, Eikund has built its reputation by rediscovering forgotten Norwegian designs from the post-war golden age and putting them back into production —properly, with the original makers’ families where possible. Expect solid oak,naturally tanned leather and Norwegian wool, in shapes that have aged better than most things made since.

Find them at: Norwegian International Collection - Church of Design, St Bartholomew the Great, West Smithfield, EC1A 9DS.

Monique Tollgard also presents Eikund andjoins the panel “Creating nurturing spaces to thrive: the Norwegian design approach” at Haberdashers’ Hall, Thursday 21 May, 15:30–16:30.

Gemla

Sweden’s oldest furniture maker, founded in 1861, still steam-bending beech by hand in the village of Diö.

Gemla’s archive runs deep - Axel Einar Hjorth, Åke Axelsson, and a steady stream of contemporary collaborators who understand the discipline of working with a160-year-old workshop. The pieces are quiet, structural, and built to outlast the people who buy them. If you care about how a chair is actually put together, this is the stand to linger at.

Find them at: Church of Design, St Bartholomew the Great, West Smithfield, EC1A 9DS.

RS Barcelona

Spanishdesign with a sense of play - outdoor tables, indoor games, and a Mediterranean confidence in colour.

Founded in1975, RS Barcelona has spent fifty years making the case that good design canalso be joyful. Their foosball tables sit in museums; their outdoor furnituresits comfortably in courtyards from Mallorca to Marylebone. Steel, powder coat,marine-grade textiles — engineered to live outside, designed to be livedaround.

Find them at:  Interiors From Spain - Museum of the Order of St John, St John’s Gate, EC1M 4DA.

To enquire about pieces featured here, or to discuss a project, contact us: sales@tollgard.com.

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Milan Design Week returns each year as a pilgrimage for those who believe that a piece of furniture is never merely functional, it is an idea made tangible.

The energy of Salone del Mobile 2026 carried a particular resonance this spring, driven by the year's theme: A Matter of Salone. Materials as the genesis of design - stone, petal, wood, sponge - became a lens through which we encountered the familiar afresh.

What inspired us most was the focus on craft, longevity and design. We've curated a selection of pieces that captured this, each one destined for the Tollgard showroom in London... stay tuned.

Bieke Castelyn - Clover Coffee Table

We've long admired Bieke Casteleyn's refusal to over-explain. Her new coffee table 'Clover' carries that conviction forward - a study in what materials want to be, unadorned. The form is sculptural without claiming to be art; the materials speak for themselves. It's the kind of piece that settles into a room and only reveals itself with time.

Van Rossum - Bracci Armchair

Pieter Maes's Bracci armchair is a study in the language of embrace. The designer continues his exploration of sculptural seating with this piece, where the delicately curved backrest gathers leather naturally at its centre, as though inviting the body to settle in. Built around a solid oak frame in Coal brushed finish, with Lenis Amber leather, the Bracci exemplifies the kind of emotional restraint that marks excellent design.

Jeroen de Ruddere - FL5 Floor Lamp

The FL5 is a sculptural wooden floor lamp that unites the strength of nature with refined contemporary sensibility. De Ruddere's signature approach - drawing inspiration from the organic world, then distilling it into pure geometric form is evident throughout. The tree-trunk-inspired silhouette feels both solid and elegant, a balance that defines his practice. Available in Brutal Oak, Gentle Oak, Mahogany, and American Walnut.

Linteloo - Volta Sofa

The Volta modular sofa for Linteloo is designed on the principle of a continuous arch, gentle curves that embrace those gathered within. Each module forms part of an architectural whole that can be extended, opened, or made more intimate according to need.

LEMA - Vega Coffee Tables

LEMA's Vega coffee table represents the Italian maker's commitment to refined proportion and material expression. The piece anchors a living space through its confident geometry and careful use of wood or stone.  

Ceccotti Collezioni - Eugene Armchair

DRAW Studio's Eugene Armchair for Ceccotti Collezioni caught us early and held our attention. A reinterpretation of mid-century form, it channels the rounded shapes and enveloping comfort of 1950s and '60s design through a decidedly contemporary lens. The construction is quietly rigorous, circular in plan, grounded on a solid wood cross base, with a generous round seat.

Molteni&C - Bosco Armchair

Naoto Fukasawa's Bosco armchair for Molteni&C is Inspired by the gentle hills of Tuscany. The chair's soft, generous volume and subtly divided contours echo the rhythms of landscape. The form favours continuity, shaping a compact silhouette that feels stable, protective, and calm.

Poltrona Frau - Stock 'n' Roll Dressing Table

We've fallen for the Stock 'n' Roll Dressing Table by Sebastian Herkner. It's a piece that doesn't try too hard, an exquisitely proportioned form in curved beech and soft Pelle Frau leather. Open it, and you find an interior quietly ready for ritual.

Riva 1920 - Heiko Chair

Designed by Staffan Tollgård & Filippo Castellani, the Heiko chair for Riva 1920 exemplifies the marriage of clean, understated design with refined execution. A solid wood frame defined by architectural clarity is balanced by soft curves and rounded cylindrical sections. This is design that knows its purpose and serves it with dignity.

De Castelli - Dorica Sideboard

We've long admired De Castelli's ability to turn metal into poetry. The Dorica Sideboard is a perfect example - inspired by the fluting of classical columns, it becomes a sculptural presence in any room. The concave slats catch the light beautifully in that signature De Fauvé finish, while practical shelving hides inside.

Established & Sons - Layup Lounge Chair

Nathan Martell's collaboration with Established & Sons explores the evolving possibilities of 3D veneer formin, a technique that allows complex sculptural silhouettes to emerge from layered wood construction. What appears as a single, sinuous form is in fact a multi-part moulded veneer assembly, seamlessly joined. British design pushing the boundaries of what wood can become.

Frag - Kawa Low Tables

The Kawa series designed by Staffan Tollgård & Filippo Castellani reimagines the side table through a studied dialogue between top and base. Compact, round or rectangular surfaces sit atop asymmetrical supports - vertical elements offset beneath to create a dynamic interplay of solid and void.

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Keep an eye out for some of these pieces to arrive in our London showroom soon. Experience them in person - to understand not just the thinking, but the making.

To enquire about pieces featured here, or to discuss a project, contact us: sales@tollgard.com.

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