Thirty seven years old, widowed and with two young sons to provide for, Georg Jensen gambled his life savings on opening a tiny silversmithy in the spring of 1904, a decision that would change not only his life but also the history of Danish silverware and jeweller...

Jensen was born in 1866, the seventh of eight children, in the town of Radvaad north of Copenhagen where his father worked as a knife grinder in the local factory. His creativity exhibited itself early on and his family encouraged his artistic nature, moving to Copenhagen when he was 14 so that he could be apprenticed as a goldsmith with the firm Guldsmed Andersen. In his spare time he attended a technical school and also indulged his hobby of modellin...