ArtistDanish
Erik Severin Risager-Hansen
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Erik Severin Risager-Hansen was born in 1936 in Copenhagen into a family already embedded in the Danish furniture trade. His father, Severin Hansen, ran Haslev Møbelsnedkeri, a cabinet-making workshop in the small town of Haslev south of Copenhagen. Growing up in that environment meant an early and practical familiarity with wood, construction and the demands of the market - though he was not formally trained as a cabinetmaker or architect in the way many of his contemporaries were.
In 1957, at the age of 21, he joined Haslev Møbelsnedkeri as its chief designer. Within a year he had produced the collection that established his reputation: a coordinated range of tables and a desk, all built around a signature three-way mitred corner joint. The Model 36 desk, shown at the Copenhagen Cabinetmakers' Guild Exhibition in 1958, became the defining piece - its precise geometry and clean tapered legs placing it squarely within the idiom of Danish Modern at its most disciplined. The collection also included the Model 35 side table series and, later, the extendable Model 71 dining table in Rio rosewood.
He worked under several names, using Erik Severin, Severin Hansen Jr., Erik Risager and Risager-Hansen interchangeably. This reflected a deliberate marketing strategy as much as a personal identity choice - it gave Haslev flexibility to present the same designer's work as a range of different names to different buyers. His materials were almost exclusively noble hardwoods: rosewood, mahogany and, to a lesser extent, teak and oak. A notable collaboration with Royal Copenhagen produced tables whose rosewood surfaces were inset with hand-painted ceramic tiles glazed by Nils Thorsson, pieces that became international bestsellers.
Beyond furniture, he competed in the Monte Carlo Rally in 1962, an episode that speaks to the same appetite for precision and performance that shaped his workshop practice. By 1969 he became a co-owner of Haslev Møbelsnedkeri. When demand for solid hardwood furniture declined sharply across European and American markets in the early 1970s, the company was sold in 1973, and Risager-Hansen's active design career ended in 1978 when he finally left the firm. He died in 2020 at the age of 84.
On the Auctionist platform, his pieces appear through Scandinavian auction houses, primarily Bidstrup Auktioner. All 15 recorded lots are furniture - coffee tables, side tables, and occasional tables in rosewood, mahogany and teak from the 1960s. Prices have been modest at this level, with the highest recorded sale at 2,802 SEK for a round rosewood coffee table, and a pair of rectangular rosewood coffee tables fetching 2,144 SEK. The Royal Copenhagen collaboration also appears, with one tile-top table sold at 859 SEK. His work trades more actively on international platforms such as 1stDibs, where pieces reach $2,000-4,000 USD.