exploring 24 Textile town Herning 25 fantastic industries

SEe WWW.25FANTASTISKE.DK By the mid-1800s, traditional Central hosiery-making started to evolve industrial methods. Along Silkeborgvej and Hammerum Hovedgade, popularly known as ’factory avenue’, is a continuous built environment reflecting the growth of the textile industry. Today, most of the Central Jutland textile industry’s production has been outsourced and the textile boom on what was once heathland is long since over. Herning is now known for its arts and culture, rather than for its textile industry, which is perhaps due to the fact that in the 1950s and 1960s a number of enterprising local manufacturers succeeded in encouraging the country’s best architects, artists, town planners and designers to make their mark on the region. fold here 24 // Textile town Herning

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textilforum vestergade 20 7400 herning

www.herningmuseum.dk

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01 HERNING CLOTH FACTORY/ Textilforum The factory was established as a woollen mill in 1876. Under in Central Jutland. The most dominant industry, and the one now had 300 employees and was turning out 3,000 shirts a changing ownership, it suffered ups and downs until the 1960s that has shaped the built environment here, was the knitwear day. Damgaard now moved out into the new industrial estate at when the business went only downhill until it finally closed industry. Besides the array of factory buildings of various Birk, where he built a new factory (see also item 05). Although down in 1990. The factory sustained many fires, as a result of sizes, it is characteristic that many of the villas and detached the cloth factory has since been converted into flats, it is still a which the buildings that remain are almost all of more recent houses have small outbuildings that were formerly used for monument to Herning’s industrial history. origin. Out of the factory’s old premises, two intermediate cottage-industry dress-making and knitwear production. The buildings from 1895 and 1899 remain, together with two road between Herning and Hammerum displays a vivid legacy 03 Niels Krøjsgaard’s villa management residences built just across from the factory in of the region’s modern and traditional textile industries. In 1939, Niels Krøjgaard, who originally owned the factory on the same period. In 1996, Textilforum opened the cloth facto- Th. Nielsensgade, built a grand 750 m2 villa for himself and ry’s expansive 3,000 m2 premises as a museum. Textilforum 02 ’THE BLACK FACTORY’ his family. At the time, he was one of the wealthiest men in the is housed in the factory’s administration building, two large In 1936, Niels Krøjgaard had a factory built at no. 87 Th. town, which was all in evidence in his residence, which local saw-toothed-roof halls and the chimney-topped boiler house. Nielsensgade for his existing knitwear manufactory. The residents nicknamed „Mini Marselisborg“ in reference to the The factory buildings date from the period 1895 to 1954 along architect was the manager of the local credit institution, J.P. royal residence in . Today, the building on Kaj Munksvej with a four-storey weaving building from 1948. The administra- Møller, who styled the factory as a two-storey square block. 4 is occupied by a law firm, which in 2002 built the almost tion building, the front building facing Vestergade, was built in 20 years later, in 1956, Niels Krøjgaard sold the premises 2,000 m2 black extension building to the east. 1901 and is a richly ornamented red-brick building with a slate to Aage Damgaard who acquired it for his fourth Angli shirt- roof. A number of the cloth factory’s machines have been pre- making factory. Under his ownership, the premises became 04 Carpet showroom building, No. 4 served and form part of Textilforum’s exhibitions on themes a canvas for what might be termed ’s ’largest experi- such as the textile industry in the Herning district. ment in social realism’, when the artist Paul Gadegaard was Silkeborgvej given free rein to decorate the factory. The exterior was painted In 1957, Mads Eg Damgaard built an unusual showroom for FABRIKSALLEEN black, hence the name, and all the windows and doors in bright his factory, Egetæpper’s, art carpets. Designed by the artist The road between Herning, via Birk, to Hammerum is known colours. A large park was laid out by the landscape gardener Gunnar Aagaard Andersen in association with the architects as fabriksalleen, ’factory avenue’. Because here, along C.Th. Sørensen. A number of Denmark’s leading artists were Jan and Karen Eggen, it has a quadratic ground plan, is set at Silkeborgvej and Hammerum Hovedgade as in the towns of involved in decoration of the factory, including Robert an angle on a cruciform plinth, and features a sloping floor and Herning, Hammerum and , the landscape and buildings Jacobsen and Svend Wiig Hansen. But as early as in 1963, roof. The location at the entrance to Herning was to ensure its testify to the textile manufacturing boom that once took hold ’The Black Factory’ had become too small for Angli, which visibility, and people did look twice when they caught sight of this unconventional building. In this way, the building fulfilled its Boeck-Hansen, but underwent extensive alteration in 1982 aim: to be an eye-catching and hence effective advertisement when it was given a new facade and a showroom and recep- for Egetæpper. The two Damgaard brothers’ association with tion building designed by the Aarhus architect C.F. Møller . modern artists has been a strongly influential factor in the rich In 1984, a showroom and administration building was added, cultural life of modern Herning. also designed by Møller. During this period the architect created a large number of screening frontages around industrial 05 Egetæpper (Carpets) plants. The frontage at Egetæpper is around 300 metres long Mads Eg Damgaard, the founder of the Egetæpper carpet and is intersected by the large showroom and Søren Georg empire, took at giant leap in 1953 when he wound up his textile Jensen sculptures. The showroom interior is decorated with production, sacked all 150 employees except 15 and instead wall carpets by the artists Pierre Wermaëre and Asger Jorn bought machinery for weaving high-quality Axminster carpets. and the atrium garden contains Rudolf Tegner’s sculpture But his strategy was successful. Initially, Damgaard’s new fac- „Leda and the Swan“. The business is still in operation, but is tory had 3 Axminster looms but soon after no fewer than 44, today known solely as ’Ege’. RELATED SITES: all in uninterrupted, three-shift operation. The early 1960s saw 06 the advent of the next technological revolution in the carpet ’THE ROUND FACTORY’ Herning Cloth Factory / Textilforum industry: the tufting loom. Egetæpper went from strength to When Angli, the shirt-maker’s, outgrew ’The Black Factory’, Vestergade 20 strength, moving from a small factory by the original show- Aage Damgaard acquired a large property at Birk. Based on 7400 Herning room on Silkeborgvej to this vast, 35,000 m2 complex on a concept created by C.Th. Sørensen, ’the Round Factory’ www.textilforum.dk Industrivej. The new premises had space for the large tufting was built in 1965, and the architect was C.F. Møller. C.Th. looms and by 1971, production at the new address was in Sørensen’s original sketch consisted of two off-centre circles Herning museum of art – heart full swing. This large factory, which surpassed everything giving onto a circular courtyard. The sculptures and artworks Birk Centerpark 8 in the Herning region, was designed by the architect Kaj from the Black Factory were moved to Birk and C. Th. 7400 Herning Sørensen designed the circular sculpture park. Hereford cattle www.heartmus.dk were purchased to graze on the circular turf in the park, which subsequently inspired the idea for the next venture, what is now a chain of restaurants called Hereford Beefstouw, and fold here

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new artists were contracted to decorate the factory, including contains a collection of products from the factory including Piero Manzoni, famed for his tin can work containing „Artist’s men’s and women’s underwear, blouses and gym slips. shit“. In 1968, Carl-Henning Pedersen’s ceramic frieze was unveiled in the courtyard: „Picture cycle. The book of imagina- 08 Jensen & Stampe tion about the wheel of life“. But by 1974, the shirt-making In the town of Hammerum, Iver Nielsen established a knitwear boom had petered out, and Aage Damgaard shut up shop . The factory as early as in 1870, A few years later he moved his factory was sold to an arts and education foundation, Midtjysk business to what is now no. 95A Hammerum Hovedgade. Not Skole- og Kulturfond, set up in 1973. The large art collection until later was the factory given the name Jensen & Stampe. was donated to Herning local authority for the purpose of The oldest factory building, two storeys high and facing the establishing a museum of art. Part of the Angli factory was main street, dates from circa 1890. This building is not only fitted out for a garment design school, while other parts were the oldest from this factory, but the oldest textile building in the used by Herning Museum of Art from its establishment in 1977 district of Hammerum. In 1917-18, a new, larger building was until 2009 when the new museum of art in Herning, HEART, established at right angles to the main street. This was built was completed further along Birk Centerpark at no. 8. to house a modern knitwear factory, with state-of-the-art machines. Jensen & Stampe was one of the first businesses 07 Niels Larsen knitwear factory to switch from steam power to electricity in 1906 after In 1872, the wool shop keeper Niels Larsen purchased a Hammerum gained its own electricity works in 1905. Holger rotary power framework machine and he and his wife stepped Jensen, one of the factory’s owners, also happened to be the up their production of woollen garments. Their business was electricity works’ chairman. The business did well for many soon ready for expansion. In 1883, Larsen acquired the years, but in 1994, the factory closed down and the premises Hammerumholm estate, where the manufactory gradually were converted into flats. The original exterior of the oldest expanded. In 1917, following the death of Niels Larsen, his building was preserved, however, as a monument to the widow and son Otto Larsen had the factory building on district’s oldest knitwear factory. Vestergade built. The factory was in operation at this location until it closed down in 1986. In the late 1990s, Niels Larsen’s 1,500-m2 factory was converted into flats, while the original factory front facing the road was preserved. Herning Museum