MARIA BRUUN

With her work, the Danish designer Maria Bruun joins a long-standing design tradition. With sincere respect for classic Danish furniture, Bruun builds on this foundation with an innovative approach, creating her design in close dialogue with skilled craftspeople. Bruun often devotes her work to the refinement of the individual elements and persistently seeks out new possibilities in her field, often using familiar materials in new constellations. Another recurring element is her use of repetition. This additive practice engenders flexibility and recognition – a sense of familiarity as in our daily chores. This interplay of recognition and renewal imbues Bruun’s work with a quality that sparks heightened awareness. She interacts independently with her surroundings in the creation of unique experiences in form and space. 

With a unique sense of tactility and scale, carefully adapted in materials as metal, wood and glass, combined with curiosity, respect and meticulousness Bruun pushes the borders of how we understand space and interior. With a stage designer’s approach, Bruun creates safe and welcoming settings. That quality and the insight that comes from standing on a foundation of other’s work allow her to create carefully considered designs that are a pleasure both to use and to behold. Tekst: Marie-Louise Høstbo

In may 2022 Bruun was awarded the Wegner Prize, for her collaborative methods and approach to design. In 2021, Maria Bruun was awarded the prestigious Danish Finn Juhl Prize. Maria Bruun was also the first furniture designer to be included in the two-year work grant ‘Young artistic Elite’ from the Danish Arts Foundation (2019-2020). In 2018, Bruun was nominated for the Dezeen Awards ‘New Designer of the Year’. In 2015, she was admitted as a member of the Danish Artists Society. In 2014, Maria Bruun won the Danish Design Awards “Design of the Year”. Her works have been shown at renowned museums such as Design Museum in London and Designmuseum Denmark. Most recently, she presented the total installation ‘Reflected Surroundings’ on the acclaimed art and design platform Design Miami Basel.

“To me, good design is both artistic and commercial. While these two aspects are often seen as opposing forces, my belief is that they can coexist within a single design object. This project explores the expressive potential in the tension between the artistic and the commercial—what is feasible "technically and materially" in the glassblower's workshop and what can be envisioned on the designer's drawing board.”

For collection 09, Ark Kollekt presents a series of glass pieces designed by Danish designer Maria Bruun. The carafe and glass are two of several functional objects in this series, originally conceived from a series of detailed tests blown by glassblowers Anders Raad and Maria Bruun. The series immerses us in the profound technical and artistic magic intrinsic to glass and translates that into functional design objects. As each piece of glass bears its unique traces from the craft process, air bubbles and irregularities may occur, all of which contribute to making each piece unique.