Margrethe mixing bowl, Jacob Jensen, 1954.

Given that it is Nordic Day tomorrow, Thursday 23^rd March 2023, I thought it would be apt for this blog to celebrate a lovely piece of Danish design from the MoDiP collections.

AIBDC : 008850 and 008849
Image credit: https://www.modip.ac.uk/collections?columbo%5B0%5D=person%3A14306

The Margrethe mixing bowl was originally designed by Jacob Jensen in 1954, whilst working at the design studio of Bernadotte & Bjørn Industridesign A/S, Denmark’s first industrial design studio. It was founded by Swedish silversmith and industrial and furniture designer Count Sigvard Bernadotte and Danish architect and designer Acton Bjørn in 1949. Jensen worked with the company from 1952-1958.

Left to right: Bernadotte, Bjorn and Jensen.
Image credit: https://www.europeana.eu/en/item/91625/nomu_photo_
NMA0055468 (left) and https://beo.zone/en/jacob-jensen/ (right).

Rosti, manufacturers of melamine tableware, first began looking to add a mixing bowl to their product line in 1947. Over several years they undertook research, asking groups of housewives to test a series of competitors' bowls and rate them for their positive and negative points. They found that their customers wanted a bowl that had high sides to enable activities such as stirring and whipping without spillage, but that also had a pouring lip and a handle. Furthermore, it needed to be lightweight, durable and robust. The company approached Bernadotte & Bjørn with the design brief, which was handed over to Jacob Jensen, a newly qualified industrial designer from the School of Arts and Crafts (Denmark).

Image credit: https://rosti.design/design/

Compression moulded in melamine formaldehyde, the bowl was named by Bernadotte (who was the brother of Queen Ingrid of Denmark) after his niece who would later become Queen Margrethe II of Denmark. Launched in time for Christmas 1954, it was made available in three sizes that could stack inside one another, in the colours red, white, blue, yellow and green. It proved an instant success and has gone on to become a design classic with over 25 million sold worldwide to date.

Image credit: https://www.dreamstime.com/photos-images/pottery-denmark.html

The rubber anti-slip ring around the base was added in 1966, and matching lids in polypropylene followed along with additional bowl sizes and colours. The Margrethe has won numerous awards such as the ID Classic Prize for designs that have been in production for over 25 years, and it has even appeared on a stamp (refer image above). There are examples in many different museum collections and it is regularly featured in exhibitions.

On display in the ‘Design: the problem comes first’ exhibition, V&A, 1983.
Image credit: https://www.vads.ac.uk/digital/collection/DCSC/id/8551/

At MoDiP, we currently have two examples: a 3 litre capacity bowl in white dated to the 2000s and a 4 litre capacity bowl in red dated to the 1970s. We also have some other objects designed by Bernadotte and Bjørn such as the Roda Clara can opener and the Taffel picnic set. All of these can be viewed in the museum on request.

I want an oversized Margrethe bowl to use as a planter too!
Image credit: https://www.instagram.com/p/CAuTgf8FqtW/

 
Katherine Pell
Collections Officer