Before becoming a designer, I was trained as a carpenter and worked as such for some years before enrolling at the design school in Copenhagen. Working as a carpenter taught me the importance of taking care of one’s tools and reducing the amount of materials used as well as giving me an appreciation of working with my hands, even thinking through them at times too. I was born and raised in Denmark; a country where the values of craftsmanship—the notion of doing things properly to a high standard—are an inherent part of daily life. I find that Scandinavian craftsmanship is shaped by its emphasis on quality above everything else, birthed from a desire to simplify and refine one’s work for it to have a democratic appeal; making it relevant for the many rather than the few.

Craftsmanship is felt not only through the physical quality of a design but even more so through its aesthetical appearance, with its expression becoming informed by the possibilities and constraints of craftsmanship. I always strive to challenge these very boundaries within every project that I do, allowing for me to continuously question my ways of working and, in turn, maybe even expanding the very potential of craftsmanship as a whole.

Materiality is something that will always play its part within craftsmanship and to me, Scandinavian materiality is concerned with the idea of using materials in the right way while also presenting them as means in achieving your desired function. In that sense, materials at once present the opportunities and boundaries of a design.