the great life The GreAT LIfe greatdanefurniture.com the great life we live ravelling all around Scandinavia for the past ten visions of the entire family relaxing in each other’s company in a modern years, I’ve really come to believe that furniture family home but can just as easily be visualised in a sleek loft apartment design from that part of the world is exceptionally or the lobby of a busy office. suited to the way we live in Australia. Of course the Scandinavian design takes all the best ideas from the turn of the century aesthetic appeals to me and I have enormous respect and interprets them with deft, modern accents to produce pieces you will and affection for the region’s design traditions but love to live with for years to come. I love the way that this furniture remains there’s a spirit to the design there, an élan I guess so devastatingly clean in its lines and yet retains a handmade character that you could call it, that automatically feels ‘right’ when somehow keeps it warm, human and accessible. in an Australian context. I guess I’ve dedicated my life to gathering – and producing – the best of this Great Dane’s ten-year birthday and the unveiling of our spacious new Victorian furniture for the Australian market. Many of our pieces are exclusive to Great showroom has given myself and the senior team a chance to stand back and Dane. We work closely with manufacturers and designers in Scandinavia and view contemporary Scandinavian design, cherry picking all we feel is indicative T we live surrounded by these gorgeous works of functional art. We love the of this furniture at its best as well as what will best suit our clients’ homes. way these pieces contribute to our Great Life; we think you will too. As you look at the images in this publication or wander the showroom floor you Anton Assaad will see a collection of furniture and accessories that has been specially selected Founder – Great Dane to work in harmony within your entire home. Pieces like the Sunday Sofa invite The GreAT LIfe ONLY AT GREAT DANE GREAT DANE IS THE EXCLUSIVE REPRESENTATIVE IN AUSTRALIA FOR THE FURNITURE, LIGHTING AND ACCESSORIES You’ll FIND ON THE SHOWROOM FLOOR. THIS COMES ABOUT FROM ANTON ASSAAD’s DIRECT DEALINGS WITH DESIGNERS AND MANUFACTURERS IN SCANDINAVIA BUT ALSO FROM HIS COMMITMENT TO SEARCHING OUT LEGENDARY DESIGNS AND WORKING WITH THE FAMILIES OF THE DESIGNERS TO BRING THIS WORK BACK TO LIFE, UPDATED FOR THE CONTEMPORARY MARKET. Sunday excitement is high at Great Dane with the arrival of the Sunday sofa, the company’s new foray into large modular sofas that matches fantastic Scandinavian design with our wonderful Australian way of life. Ideal for the family home, the inner city apartment, the stylish workplace, the Sunday sofa is yet another showpiece for the new collaborations taking place within Scandinavian design community. Designed by Danish agency furnID on behalf of prestigious fredericia furniture, the perfectly named Sunday allows you to configure these lovely lounge pieces into an arrangement that suits you, your space, your family and your pastimes. There is even a phone ‘app’ that can help you with this, playing with the modules, angles and textiles to create your own perfect combination. furnID is an ambitious furniture and industrial design office consisting of Morten Kjær Stovegaard and Bo Strange, two designers committed to creating products that are both friendly and welcoming; the Sunday is a true testament to this philosophy with its well balanced mix of both modern and classic expressions and the various textile combinations which give you an interesting palette of structures and colours to work with. fredericia furniture is a family-owned business, which has contributed to creating international respect for Scandinavian design for generations, since 1911 in fact. Raft Kasper rønn and Jonas Bjerre-Poulsen, the architects behind NOrM, spread their talents over residential architecture, commercial interiors and industrial design. They see their work as a part of the Scandinavian modernist tradition – functional, minimal, poetic and timeless – and focus on natural materials and attention to detail. Now Norm Architects have designed the raft table and stool for Danish manufacturer &Tradition. &Tradition epitomises the ongoing originality and vision of Scandinavian design with its commitment to combining solid craftsmanship with modern design. The company works with both emerging and established designers and is renowned for producing some of Verner Panton’s and Arne Jacobsen’s most celebrated designs. Blending the roughness of natural materials with the industrial efficiency of metal structures, the raft collection is perfect for homes, offices, cafes, and more. Playful, stylish, youthful and versatile, raft represents an ongoing design evolution. greatdanefurniture.com Wikkelsø What Morten Illum Wikkelsø, pronounced Vikkelsow, is one of Great Dane’s favourite kinds of designers – a master of his craft with an eternal eye for style that, outside of his homeland, is not as famous as some of his contemporaries. his seminal work, such as the V11 seating – sofa, armchair and footstool – remains sexy, stylish and & Bo from comfortable. As a designer Wikkelsø was fond of saying that a chair is something you should be able to lie on as well as sit in and the V11 demonstrates this quality. Wikkelsø, who died at the end of the 1990s, was an interior designer before becoming a furniture designer. he set up a studio in a farm south of Århus, FurnID think Denmark’s second-largest city, and there he set about creating furniture that fit his principles of embracing the body, delighting the eye and remaining durable. Great Dane’s founder, Anton Assaad, aware that Wikkelsø’s work continued to be internationally sought after and collected, approached the designer’s adult about... children in 2009 to gauge their interest in allowing Great Dane to bring the V11 series back into production. “ I was invited to the son’s house for lunch and was delighted to see that he held on to many of his father’s paintings and furniture. The work was still clearly revered by the family,” says Anton. “They had a deep appreciation for their father’s talent. The son is a neurosurgeon and the daughter is a painter. She worked with her father at one point and has some of the models of his work around her home. She actually gave me one of her paintings when I visited.” This kind of painstaking but rewarding cultivation of relationships is what leads Great Dane to have exclusive rights to V11 internationally now. Considered by design hunters to be one of the premium sofa designs of the mid-century period, V11 seating can be found in the office of the Japanese president and in the collection of King feisel of Saudi Arabia. “ Wikkelsø was a man of passion,” says Anton. “Talking to his children I understood just what exacting standards he had. At Great Dane our master craftsmen make each piece, from beginning to end, in line with these standards.” for Anton the V11 stands out as the most relevant sofa from that period. “I feel that with its masculinity blended with softness, it sits perfectly with today’s aesthetics,” he says. “Wikkelsø used to tell his kids, ‘It’s a big hill to Copenhagen,’ because design at his time was so competitive. It makes me happy to see his exemplary work still being appreciated and, better yet, used.” Bo Strange and Morten Kjær Stovegaard SCANDINAVIAN DESIGN HISTORY “Over the years it’s become clear to us that Danish design is a well-known brand and something everybody has an opinion on and for that particular reason we find it very inspiring. Our greatest task working with design is to keep challenging the common perception of what design is all about in order to create new fundamental possibilities – something our forefathers mastered quite well.” WHERE IDEAS COME FROM “It is overall very difficult to narrow that answer down to just one thing! It is definitely a strong combination of everyday impressions, our legacy, and the spirit of the time we live in that initially give us the ideas in the first place. The process of development differs from time to time depending on the project. It is indeed a continuously moving, always expanding working procedure where we try our best to chase that specific inner picture and follow the feeling which is usually there long before the design is made reality.” THE BEST ROOM FOR THE SUNDAY SOFA “The dream scenario for the ultimate Sunday experience would probably be featured like an independent island placed in an open New York loft where the inhabitants appreciate their Sundays off; floating, chilling, and relaxing in a stylish yet cosy environment ... we can’t wait to see how some crazy Australians set theirs up!” HAVING THEIR FURNITURE ON THE GLOBAL STAGE “It feels absolutely great knowing that all the time and energy we put into developing our designs is globally appreciated. The end user’s satisfaction is our reward and an unbelievable recognition and a constant reminder to continue following our passion.” WORKING WITH FREDERICA “To meet someone like Thomas and the rest of the fredericia furniture crew who seem to understand the way we feel about design ... well ... in order to truly create something remarkable in the design scene today, it is essential to have the right match between designer and manufacturer. When teaming up with fredericia we realised that the constellation was just right. Today, we still enjoy the fact that this company dared to take on a product as unique and difficult to produce as Dekka into their collection.” WHY AUSTRALIANS LOVE SCANDINAVIAN DESIGN “even though we haven’t actually been to Australia just yet we do believe we have very similar viewpoints of keeping things simple and getting the most out of life.