Georg Jensen silver is all fun and games with Paula Gerbase at a secret Copenhagen garden

During 3 Days of Design 2026, Georg Jensen took over a space in the city's Højbro Plads (opposite its showroom) and transformed it into a ‘Secret Garden’ to debut its new ‘Georg Jensen at Play’ collection. Featuring silver and stone dice, a woodland-inspired Mikado set, a spinning top, a snail whistle, a yo-yo and a new take on the traditional Scandinavian 'Kubb' Game (here renamed 'Toad'), the series taps into a playful side of the Danish design house and silversmithy, and offers an insight into creative director's Paula Gerbase's approach to the illustrious heritage of the brand.

Since her appointment in 2024, Gerbase has been studying Georg Jensen's history and the opportunities to quietly shake up its heritage in a way that is both exciting and respectful. Recent launches include a home fragrance debut, and a collection of archival jewellery expressing modernist Danish design principles. With ‘Georg Jensen at Play’, Gerbase uncovers another chapter of the company's legacy, inspired by its founder's own life and the approach to silver that has defined its history.

We met Gerbase at Georg Jensen's ‘Secret Garden’ to find out more about how play fits into the company's history, and how it's helping shape her future vision.

Georg Jensen at 3 Days of Design: interview with Paula Gerbase

Wallpaper*: Why did you choose games?

Paula Gerbase: My perception of Georg Jensen before I started was quite different to what I found when I joined. [I saw the company as] something that was quite rigorous; it was about quality and silversmithing, but in my view it had a seriousness to it, and an overarching diligence. But actually, as I started to uncover the history of the man himself, the way that he set up his original atelier, where his roots were from, my perception changed.

W*: Can you tell me more about Georg Jensen’s life before he founded his workshop?

PG: [He came] from this woodland area outside of Copenhagen, quite humble beginnings. As a child, he was a wanderer, and this curiosity was really integral to how he lived and worked. I was told stories of him as young boy, being sent out to fetch milk, and then being surprised at finding a little field mouse, forgetting about the task, and scooping up the field mouse and taking it home.

Then it was fast-forward to his sculpture education at the Royal Academy here in Copenhagen, and then his being awarded a travel studies scholarship, whereby he went to France and Italy, and really absorbed a lot of [local] nature. He then came back home, and when he started working as a goldsmith, most of his pieces were belt buckles, brooches, pendants, all very animalistic: insects, critters, fireflies. So all of those elements led me to realise that what I was actually undertaking was something so much more playful, it had so much more freedom, and was also more fluid in nature.

And I also saw an openness to chance: when [Georg] started setting up his own atelier, collaboration was there from the very beginning, with other artists, sculptors, silversmiths invited come in and reinterpret his own work. This became integral to how he founded the company, but also how he continued his legacy.

W*: How has this shaped your approach to silver?

PG: That openness is something that I would love to recreate here: an opportunity for chance encounters, a space which has some generosity, a playfulness, and curiosity for allowing people to interact with silver in a way that isn't so rarefied. [It’s a chance for] speaking of material, a material that is living and breathing, has patina, and dents, and evolves with time; and of course, it’s absolute quality, but we're showing the material for what it is, which is a very beautiful material that can weather and absorb these simple moments. Because if you inherit something, you're inheriting it with the traces of those moments well lived.

W*: How did that lead to ‘Georg Jensen at Play’?

PG: It felt completely natural to create a space to allow for those dialogues, and for people to be able to touch and feel the material, and maybe also [to give them] permission to look at design as imperfection.

Design should be reflective of the way that we live and [our work] should support and honour that. I think silver as a material can really do that because it does absorb [lived] moments, and it has markings of those moments.

W*: This is an interesting approach for Georg Jensen: we are very used to experiencing the company's objects behind glass. Here in the garden, though, a child was just playing with a silver object and throwing it around. That wasn't on my bingo card for today. I imagine it is important for you to open up the house in this way.

PG: There's, I hope, a humility [that reflects] the spirit of our founder as someone who invited so many different kinds of people into the atelier. And this is also my experience of working in this house, alongside artisans; this is a community, and these relationships, these conversations are actually imperfect, just like a family is. There are moments when you love each other. There are moments when you're arguing about something. But ultimately, it's a space for dialogue.

That is also something that is important for me, to be a catalyst for dialogue; I think that is very much in the spirit of Georg Jensen and maybe it starts to tell different stories about what the house is.

W*: Can you tell me more about the games you are launching? Did they exist in the archive?

PG: They are all new. We've conceived several woodland creatures that are very much inspired by Georg Jensen's own childhood in the woods. And so, for example, in the King's game and the Ring Toss, the King is an arrogant toad, proudly cross-armed.

But we have a history of many playful, small objects in the archive. There are lipstick cases, there's a flashlight, a silver wheelbarrow. There's lots of humour and unexpected moments in silver that you can find in the archive, [and that] inspired these objects.

W*: What are the key themes that you're looking to explore through your role as creative director?

PG: Movement, lightness of spirit, curiosity. I also think about eccentricity a lot, which is perhaps not something that one might currently relate to Georg Jensen, but when I look at the history, there's a huge amount of eccentricity. Of course, this house is also proudly Danish, and so, for me, it's been an education in heritage and folklore.

And actually, we are here [in our ‘Secret Garden’], near the statue of Absalon, the founder of Copenhagen: I saw something interesting and light about putting something so silly in a space that is so filled with history.

W*: How do you think the panorama of Danish design is changing, and how might the future look like?

PG: Each house is quite unique, so I think it's important for the authenticity to start to come through quite strongly. That's a focus for a lot of us – what our own values are. Danishness is, of course, a common factor. But it is not (for us, at least) the only one. So finding those pillars that make each house unique, and leaning into those will allow for a future that is interesting and modern, while also challenging the perception of what design can be – it doesn't always have to be midcentury.