LK Hjelle | Norwegian Furniture from Sykkylven

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LK Hjelle has made furniture in Sykkylven since 1940, and still makes it there — in its own factory, under third-generation family ownership. Sykkylven is Norway’s furniture town, a cluster of workshops on a fjord in Sunnmøre, and Hjelle is among the few remaining manufacturers that both design and build on site rather than commission production elsewhere.

The company’s own phrase for its position is “the uncommon one”, which reads as marketing until you look at what came out of the factory in the 1960s and 70s.

Three chairs

Fredrik A. Kayser’s Model 711 arrived in 1960 and took first prize in the chair competition run by Norway’s Industry Council for Furniture that same year. It is still in production, and was reissued in sheepskin in 2024.

Ingmar Relling’s Siesta followed in 1965 — a folding laminated frame with a slung leather seat, and the piece that did more than any other to carry Norwegian furniture into export markets. Hjelle still builds it, in a Classic version and in the Siesta Soft that extended the family in 2023.

Sigurd Resell’s Falcon came in 1971, developed from an armchair he called Blankvals that had taken second prize in a competition the year before. Resell had been looking at hammocks: the chair is a leather sling hung inside a frame, holding its shape by tension rather than padding.

The current collection

Hjelle works mainly with Norwegian designers. Jonas R. Stokke has drawn the Ada family, the Fri sofa and the modular POP system; Lars Tornøe the Less sofa; Takagi/Homstvedt the Mio and AMI tables; Studio Sløyd the Sia table. The Oslo group Norway Says produced a run of pieces for the company in the 2000s, and Andreas Engesvik — one of its former members — returned in 2025 with Gaia.

In 2025 the musician Magne Furuholmen designed a fabric for the company, which is a more Norwegian thing to do than it sounds.

Four pieces to know

Siesta by Ingmar Relling (1965) — the export success, still in production
Falcon by Sigurd Resell (1971) — leather hung in a frame, no padding
Model 711 by Fredrik A. Kayser (1960) — first prize the year it was drawn
Ada by Jonas R. Stokke — the contemporary family the collection is built around