Fredericia celebrates Nanna Ditzel: A designer who refused to stand still

A designer who refused to stand still

This November, during Tokyo Design Week, Danish design house Fredericia presents a curated exhibition dedicated to one of Denmark’s most pioneering designers, Nanna Ditzel.

Fondly known as the grande dame of Danish design, Ditzel spent more than six decades challenging conventions and expanding what furniture could be. Her work moved freely between furniture, interiors, textiles, jewellery and objects, always driven by a curiosity about how people live, move and inhabit space.

At the Fredericia showroom in Aoyama, the exhibition brings together some of Ditzel’s most distinctive furniture designs from the 1950s through the 1990s, including the bestselling Trinidad Chair and the poetic Bench for Two, which received a Gold Prize at the inaugural International Furniture Design Competition in Asahikawa (IFDA), Japan. Alongside these celebrated works, the exhibition presents a selection of newly reissued designs, including the Trisse Collection, ND82 Lounge Chair, ND83 Sofa and ND93 Desk, demonstrating Ditzel’s remarkable ability to combine sculptural expression, functionality and an unmistakable sense of lightness. The majority of the works are crafted in Denmark by skilled woodworkers and upholsterers.

Photo by Nanna Ditzel Design2

A designer breaking the rules

Ditzel was progressive and forward-looking at a time when Danish design was often associated with restraint and functionalism. Rather than pursuing timelessness, she believed design should reflect its own time, approaching each project through creative freedom and intuition. She was fascinated by the ways we sit and believed that comfortable, thoughtfully designed furniture could open the door to new ways of thinking and living.

At Fredericia, this radical approach met a company ready for change. In 1989, at the age of 66, Ditzel returned to Denmark after two decades in London and became Fredericia’s second house designer, following the company’s close collaboration with Børge Mogensen. At the same time, Thomas Graversen was stepping into the next generation of the family business, looking to broaden Fredericia’s design direction.

Their collaboration began with a provocation. Bench for Two, with its generous, sculptural form, challenged expectations of what Danish furniture design could be. The meeting between Ditzel’s exploratory freedom and Fredericia’s strong functionalist tradition opened the way for a new generation of design at Fredericia.

Nanna-ditzel-bench-for-two | ScandinavianDesign.com

The breakthrough came with the Trinidad Chair in 1993, whose distinctive silhouette and perforated back challenged conventional ideas of what a chair could be. Its success helped propel Fredericia’s international growth and opened the way for a new generation of designs.

As Thomas Graversen, who led Fredericia from 1995 to 2015, recalls:
“She took all the different design competencies and drew upon them constantly. Art, nature, colours, textiles, and textures. A traditional Danish furniture designer would never have dared to make a chair like Trinidad at that time.”

Ditzel was equally unafraid of ornamentation, colour and unexpected detail. Perforations, organic forms and playful compositions, often inspired by nature, became distinctive elements of her work. Where others were paring back, Ditzel continued to add, creating designs with a poetic quality that still feels remarkably fresh.

Today, Ditzel’s willingness to challenge convention continues to resonate with Fredericia’s design team. For Maria Bruun, Head of Design at Fredericia, it is precisely this openness that makes Ditzel’s work so compelling today:

“Ditzel’s approach to the design process inspires me. For Nanna, everything was in her wheelhouse and a moldable artistic task, whether furniture, interiors, textiles, everyday objects or jewellery. I admire her uncompromising approach to the subjective and the creative, and that is something I take with me in my own work.”

The exhibition takes place at Fredericia’s Tokyo showroom, which opened in Aoyama in October 2025. Designed in collaboration with Tokyo-based architecture studio Flooat, the studio marks Fredericia’s growing presence in Japan and its long-standing cultural connection with the country.

For more than a century, Fredericia has been guided by craftsmanship, simplicity and enduring design — values that resonate naturally with Japanese traditions of refinement, material sensitivity and attention to detail. Japanese audiences have long embraced the work of Fredericia designers including Børge Mogensen, Hans J. Wegner, Nanna Ditzel and Jasper Morrison, making Tokyo a natural setting to revisit Ditzel’s work.

During Tokyo Design Week, Maria Bruun, Head of Design at Fredericia, will be in Tokyo to present the exhibition and share her perspective on Ditzel’s enduring influence on contemporary design.

Experience Nanna Ditzel at the Fredericia Tokyo showroom during Tokyo Design Week.
The exhibition is open to all on 3, 6, 7 and 8 November and will remain on view throughout the year by appointment.

Fredericia Tokyo Showroom
Seizan Gaien 101
2-5-4 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku
Tokyo

Nanna Ditzel Portrait