Wallpaper* Design Awards 2025: Kaare Klint’s Spherical bed

(Image credit: Courtesy of Carl Hansen & Søn)

published 12 January 2025

As reissue stories go, the ‘Spherical’ bed is an award-winning fairy tale of design, because it celebrates both the past and the future in one fell swoop. Originally designed by Kaare Klint, the single bed was presented in 1938 at the Danish Cabinetmakers’ Autumn Exhibition as part of Klint’s showcase, titled ‘A Lady’s Boudoir’. The show attracted criticism that making furniture for a woman living alone was profligate. Klint is said to have responded that the world could do with more elegance and love.

With its curved ends, the bed has a cocooning cosiness to it. Such was the complexity of its construction that it proved near-impossible for the still-evolving, machine-led production. Fast forward to the introduction in 2019 of Carl Hansen & Søn’s apprentice programme The Lab, in which the Danish brand mentors 18 trainees, divided into traditional and machine cabinetmakers. This influx of minds and hands dedicated to achieving meticulous levels of perfection proved to be perfect for bringing Klint’s bed back into existence.

We commend Carl Hansen & Søn’s reissue of a complexly constructed Kaare Klint bed

‘We asked permission from Klint’s family to turn the single bed into a double,’ says Jeppe Ravn Frederiksen, who heads up The Lab. ‘When we input Klint’s drawings into our 3D-modelling software, it came to life perfectly.’ Each bed takes four people around ten weeks to make. All the wood comes from a single tree, and only six beds can be made each year. ‘Such a creation does not suit high-volume production, but it’s perfect for education and training within a small workshop.’ And we all slept happily ever after.

The KK55761 Spherical Bed is available exclusively by order. For more information, write to: webshop@carlhansen.dk

carlhansen.com

Find all the Wallpaper Design Award 2025 winners in the February 2025 issue of Wallpaper* , available in print on international newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

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Hugo is a design critic, curator and the co-founder of Bard, a gallery in Edinburgh dedicated to Scottish design and craft. A long-serving member of the Wallpaper* family, he has also been the design editor at Monocle and the brand director at Studioilse, Ilse Crawford's multi-faceted design studio. Today, Hugo wields his pen and opinions for a broad swathe of publications and panels. He has twice curated both the Object section of MIART (the Milan Contemporary Art Fair) and the Harewood House Biennial. He consults as a strategist and writer for clients ranging from Airbnb to Vitra, Ikea to Instagram, Erdem to The Goldsmith's Company. Hugo recently returned to the Wallpaper* fold to cover the parental leave of Rosa Bertoli as global design director, and is now serving as its design critic.