For a young architecture student in the sixties, Danish design generally was at the epitome of good taste, innovation, and practicality. Whether as a result of cultural cringe or colonial ignorance, attaining a similar standard was thought to be pretty much well beyond the reach of mere Antipodeans, yet aspire to those dizzy heights we did.
Achieving similarly consistent levels of quality of manufacture and design excellence is arguably still something that eludes most of the rest of the world, so a visit to the Danish Design Museum in Copenhagen could easily have been something of a pilgrimage.
Perhaps it was our inadequate preconception of what the exhibition should have been that left us slightly bemused. The expected galleries of fabulous furniture and sensational silverware were there, beautifully displayed, but did not quite give the coverage one might expect from a national design museum. Where was the B&O or the Lego or Pandora we wondered?
Temporary exhibitions, beautifully contrived and thought provoking were in what we imagined should have been their places.
Suitably provoked, we explored the Royals’ residences, which changed their guard as we passed, stumbled accidentally into (and exited purposefully) a Michelin restaurant, where the fare was a little above our lunch time expectation, took a sight-seeing cruise with a live Jazz accompaniment in lieu of the standard descriptive commentary, and managed to avoid being maimed by one of several million bicycles charging past, each in reckless pursuit of a new land speed record.
Apparently along the way, we passed a rock with a small mermaid on it although we couldn’t see too much because it was raining and quite far off, but we we’ve been there, done that and had a jolly good time along the way.
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