Louvre Bowl

The Louvre Bowl - so-called since the Mus�e des Arts D�coratifs at Mus�e du Louvre in Paris acquired this bowl for their permanent collection in 1914.

The Louvre Bowl is one of Georg Jensen’s most famous designs; numerous museums around the world acquired an example of it. In Denmark, it appears on stamps showing outstanding Danish products.

As in most of Georg Jensen’s designs, the bowl is in the Art Nouveau style with the characteristic ornamental curved lines, organic structures, and decorative ornaments of flora and fauna. As a characteristic of Georg Jensen, he shows restraint in the use of decoration, limited to the middle section of leaves and beads, leaving the rest of the bowl decorated only on the surface with hammer marks.

The manner in which the bowl seems to hover weightlessly on a base of leaves is an excellent 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 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 onto the base piece by piece.