DesignerDanish
Jacob Hermann
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Jacob Hermann was born in 1910 on a farm near Viborg in Jutland. He trained first as a cabinetmaker - earning a silver medal as an apprentice - then studied furniture design at the School of Arts and Crafts in Copenhagen and painting at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. That combination of hand knowledge and formal art training gave his objects a quality that sat between craft and sculpture, and it was the tension between those two poles that would define his output across six decades.
Hermann eventually settled on the west coast of Jutland, far from the Copenhagen design world, and made most of his pieces for his own household or for friends rather than for commercial production. His furniture, made in teak, walnut, Caucasian walnut, and Bubinga, was typically produced in small numbers or as one-offs. Pieces for Randers Møbelfabrik - dining chairs, teak wall mirrors - show how his work could translate to a production setting while retaining a handmade sensibility. But Hermann was equally at home with driftwood picked up at Skagen and with exotic hardwoods sourced specifically for a piece.
The birds he began carving in the 1950s became his most widely circulated work. Starting from fragments of wood and root found on the Skagen beach, he carved figures with copper beaks and feet, ivory or stone eyes, each one distinct because the grain and color of the wood partly determined the outcome. In the 1950s Den Permanente - the Copenhagen cooperative that served as a showcase and export channel for the best Danish applied arts - distributed his birds to Japan, France, and the United States. The contemporary Danish brand Warm Nordic has reissued the Twirling Bird design in oak and smoked oak, extending that reach into the present market.
Beyond the birds, Hermann produced organic wood sculptures, wall-mounted reliefs, lamps of patinated wood with opal glass shades, carved jumping jacks, horse swings in teak and rope, and a range of furniture marked with his personal monogram. Most pieces remain unique. On the auction market, nearly all of the 21 lots in our database appeared at Bruun Rasmussen in Copenhagen, with one wall-hung relief and bowl carved in elm - described as a unique pig form - selling at Palsgaard Kunstauktioner in January 2026 for 2,847 SEK. The consistent appearance at Bruun Rasmussen, which ran a dedicated Hermann sale covered by the Antiques Trade Gazette in 2018, reflects a sustained collector interest in his work that has grown as his biography has become better known.