Word: danishness
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Stig Skovlind and Malene Breining Nielsen met 21 years ago, when he was 17 and she was 19. The Danish couple went to the same school, where Stig admits he developed a crush on Malene. "When I finally caught her, we fell deeply in love. We had so much in common - so much to talk about," he says. And in 1982, 18 months after they started dating, the two moved in together. Over the years they pursued their careers - Stig is a musician and sound technician; Malene a preschool teacher - lived in a series of rented homes in Elsinore...
...Walk This Way If the Shoe Fits, Bear It Shoes: can't live without them, but they can be a pain. Stilettos might have been the original bad shoe, but there have been plenty since. On Earth Day 1970, a Danish yoga instructor named Anne Kals started selling Earth Shoes: the heels were lower than the toes to simulate the effect of walking on sand. (It wasn't until the hallucinogens wore off that hippies remembered the arduousness of walking on a beach.) Next came Dr. Scholl's exercise sandals, wood-soled slip-ons that promised to tone calf muscles...
...Some outside factors have influenced Danish furniture design as well. During World War II, the country imported almost no wood, so that cabinetmakers had to switch from traditional dark woods like mahogany to Denmark's native beech trees - these blond woods remain very much in favor today...
...Another technological breakthrough occurred when Klint began playing around with wood lamination - a sandwich of thin pieces glued together - that the British had developed for airplanes in response to a lack of aluminum. The result is shapes that can be twisted and turned like plastic and yet remain sturdy. "Danish designers try to make their ideas suitable for industrial production,'' says Krogh. "It's something to do with our mentality that we don't like to do things that are very ornate." Krogh claims his own first: he used what is called precompressed wood, a process invented in Denmark...
...According to Krogh, the Danish tradition of designers starting out as cabinetmakers has been going out of fashion recently. Now potential designers generally go directly from high school to design school, where they are taught basic concepts from the outset. "I still feel we are building on the cabinetmaker tradition, with a close relationship to the material," says Krogh. "We're also trying to find new expressions such as form and aesthetic aspects...