7 Highlights From Copenhagen’s 3 Days of Design
The annual design fair in Copenhagen is bigger than ever—here, find Vogue’s picks of the projects you need to know about.
Reported by Vogue.
Copenhagen in June operates on its own frequency — nearly 18 hours of daylight, cobblestones, and a city that somehow makes design feel like a social event. Now in its 13th year, 3 Days of Design ran June 10–12, spreading more than 400 exhibitors across the city's Renaissance and Rococo landmarks, from Nordhavn to Islands Brygge. According to Vogue, the fair's hospitality rivaled its actual design output — buzz around chef Frederik Bille Brahe's new restaurant Daphne competed for airtime with the show itself.
Georg Jensen arrived with a point to prove. Since creative director Paula Gerbase took over in 2024, she's been loosening the 122-year-old silverware house's collar — sterling espresso cups at Salone del Mobile, now hand-carved walnut lawn-game sets debuted in a topiary garden at Højbro Plads. Kongespil batons engraved with Danish wildlife, sterling yo-yos, spinning tops: it was camp in the best possible way. The games theme extended to glass artist Helle Mardahl's Game On exhibition, where her Bon Bon pendants were reworked in Candy Crush and Tetris colorways at her Frederiksstaden flagship.
The Craft Conversation Got Radical
LA gallery Marta, building on curator Dung Ngo's research for Knife Fork Spoon: Everyday Tools, Extraordinary Design at the Denver Art Museum, commissioned 12 international designers to reimagine cutlery for a digital era — installed inside the Art Nouveau interiors of Den Frie Udstilling. The premise was clean: if cutlery 1.0 was handmade and 2.0 was manufactured, then 3.0 is 3D-printed. Every set shown, from Marcin Rusak's orchid-like forms to SO-IL's sintered-steel grids, was impossible to produce by conventional means. Meanwhile, Tekla, with architectural studio Mentze Ottenstein, staged a quiet counterpoint at Charlottenborg Palace — a tribute to 19th-century Scandinavian patchwork quilts inspired by Åsa Wettre's Old Swedish Quilts, rendered in cool blues, deep reds, and soft creams from the brand's own archive.
Venetian craft had an unexpected grip on Danish designers this year. Akua Objects — founded by Josefine Arthur and Annika Zobel Agerled in 2022 and already beloved by Ganni and Cecilie Bahnsen — unveiled a tableware collaboration with Frederik Bille Brahe, each hand-blown piece engineered to make its contents appear to float. Their new Clara collection uses filigree techniques tracing back to 16th-century Venice. Separately, jewelry designer Sophie Bille Brahe debuted her Cellophane Nuage line, including six pearlescent Murano-blown vases. Sculptor Vince Skelly made his European debut through design platform Aarticles, showing angular works carved from single blocks of West Coast timber alongside a reinterpretation of chess pieces — a sharp contrast to the curator-led Objects of Desire at Thorvaldsens Museum, where 20 designers were installed among the marble grandeur of Bertel Thorvaldsen's Neoclassical work.
When a design fair can make flatware feel futuristic and a quilt feel radical, it's doing something right — 3 Days of Design remains proof that Scandinavian restraint and genuine ambition are not mutually exclusive.
Read the original at Vogue.
