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Henning Koppel
 Danish designer Henning Koppel (1918-1981) is the creative mind behind some of the best and most famous products for the well-known Danish silversmiths Georg Jensen, and Henning Koppel carried on his association with the company for over 35 years until his death in 1981.
When Henning Koppel began designing for Georg Jensen in 1945 he was already recognized as a sculptor and had acquired considerable experience with materials that were far from as flexible to work with as silver. Koppel started to experiment with the same sculptural forms as in his earlier work and developed silver holloware in completely new organic forms in a playful imitation of nature.
Among Henning Koppel's best-known silver holloware designs are the pitchers 'Den Gravide And' (Pregnant Duck) from 1952 and 'Svanen' (The Swan) from 1951 as well as his fish platter with top from 1954. These pieces belong to the most expensive and the most demanding from the point of view of craftsmanship of any of Georg Jensen’s products.
 Koppel’s enormous influence on silver design in Denmark was recognized with a number of prizes – for example the International Design Award of the American Institute of Designers or the Gold medal of the Milan Triennale, which he was awarded three times in a row.
On top of the holloware, flatware and other things he designed for Georg Jensen Henning Koppel worked for other companies. During his exile in Sweden during the Second World War he developed pieces for Orrefors and Svenskt Tenn. Later, 1961-1981, Henning Koppel designed for instance dinnerware for the Danish porcelain manufacturer Bing & Grøndahl and several other things throughout his career for other companies, including Louis Poulsen, for which Henning Koppel in 1962 developed the oil lamp Petronella.
The lamp is made from polished and lacquered brass with a round burner and opal glass shade. The oil container is large enough to give a burning time of around 80 hours. Petronella is, as Henning Koppel's other designs, simple and functional as well as beautiful and sculptural. Whether the name Petronella refers to the lamp’s rounded, female forms or Saint Petronella, who according to legend was the beautiful daughter of Saint Peter, cannot be said for sure.
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Throughout his entire career Henning Koppel's inspiration was rooted in his characteristic drawings and naturalistic sculptures. Among other things, Henning Koppel trained as a sculptor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. He also reworked his designs very thoroughly at the drawing board, adjusting his designs countless times before they became reality. From the 1970s Henning Koppel's designs became more geometric and less sculptural, though no less beautiful and harmonious in their expression. In some of his last designs for Georg Jensen this more formal and rational design language is seen in, for instance, the weather station he developed in 1980. The weather station includes a barometer, thermometer, hydrometer and clock.
 Henning Koppel, the great post-war Danish innovator in the field of decorative arts, created dinnerware collections for Bing & Grøndahl. First he developed a porcelain tea and coffee service, which was then expanded to comprise an entire dinner service. Henning Koppel did not want the service to be decorated, but for the form to be decoration enough in itself. The service was delicate, which made it a problem to wash up in the newly arrived dishwashers of the 1960s. When critical voices pointed this out to Henning Koppel his answer was as straightforward as the porcelain itself, 'Then wash it up by hand!' The service's functional name, Form 24, never really caught on with the general public and it commonly became known as 'Hvid Koppel' (White Koppel). Despite Henning Koppel's fondness of the completely white service where nothing distracted from the form, in 1978 he also designed 'Blå Koppel' (Blue Koppel) as well as the dining service Comet, both of which decorated with a characteristic blue porcelain colour.
Henning Koppel was not just one of Denmark's greatest designers of hollowware, he also designed a range of flatware. Caravel, from 1957, was designed based on, among other things, his experience with sculptural holloware forms. This not only brought simplicity to the design but a balanced expression at the same time – for example, where the handle meets the mouthpiece. Over the years Caravel has won numerous design prizes. In its own way it is typical of Henning Koppel with its simple, soft and unadorned style, also seen in many of his holloware designs like the fish platter and pitchers from the mid-1950s. Caravel was made in silver and later in stainless steel, with bakelite being used as well for some of the pieces, for instance the salad servers.
 Some years later Henning Koppel also designed the flatware series New York, launched in 1963 as a tribute to the New York world's fair EXPO. The series became an immediate success and affordable to the general public as it was produced in stainless steel. In 1966 it won Denmark’s prestigious design prize, 'ID-Prisen'.
Koppel's cutlery won the coveted trophy due to its clean lines, where form itself was the decoration. Henning Koppel's background as sculptor is clearly felt in the series and, like Koppel’s other work for Georg Jensen, New York became internationally well-known.
The Strata flatware series from 1975 retains the minimalist expression from Henning Koppel's earlier flatware. It was produced in a less expensive mix of materials – stainless steel with a plastic covering on the handles.
The name Strata refers to the various layers of materials visible, as the stainless steel can been seen on the handles along with the coloured plastic, which came in black, red, white or brown. There is also a version of Strata with brass handles. Production of Strata ceased in the 1980s.
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