Abstract
Widely known at home and abroad, from 1931 to 1981 the Copenhagen design retailer Den Permanente showcased a juried selection of unique and artisan-designed home goods as well as items produced by major firms. This article considers the organization’s institutional history, its operations, and its outreach to the export market as background to the messaging that fostered its postwar period of greatest success between 1945 and 1960, a moment when Den Permanente enjoyed the admiration of foreign visitors, commentators, and buyers from New York to Istanbul.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jean A. Givens
Jean A. Givens is Professor of Art History in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, and author of Observation and Image-Making in Gothic Art (Cambridge University Press, 2005) (that received the John Nicholas Brown Book Prize) and Visualizing Medieval Medicine and Natural Science, 1200–1550, with Karen M. Reeds and Alain Touwaide (Ashgate, 2006). Her current book project is a comparative study of the ideology of the modern home in Sweden and Denmark from 1930 to 1960. Her research has received support from the NEH, the ACLS, the American Philosophical Foundation, the Getty Foundation, and others.