DesignerDanish
Piet Hein
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Piet Hein solved a traffic problem and created a furniture classic in the same stroke of mathematical inspiration. The Danish polymath, born in Copenhagen in 1905, was a scientist, mathematician, inventor, designer, and poet whose intellectual range defied conventional categories. When Stockholm needed a shape for the traffic roundabout at Sergels Torg in the 1950s, neither a pure rectangle nor a pure ellipse would work. Hein derived the superellipse, an advanced geometrical figure that blends the curve of an ellipse with the structure of a rectangle, creating a form that is simultaneously soft and rational.
The superellipse found its way from city planning into domestic life through Hein's collaboration with the Swedish furniture designer Bruno Mathsson. Together they adapted the shape into the Superellipse table, which Fritz Hansen put into production in 1968. Arne Jacobsen later contributed the span-leg base design. The table's surface, neither oval nor rectangular, solved the perennial problem of seating guests at a dining table: it offered the intimacy of a round table with the efficiency of a rectangular one. No one felt stuck in a corner.
Hein was equally known in Scandinavia for his "grooks" (gruk in Danish), short aphoristic poems that combined wit, philosophy, and a playful visual sensibility. He published over 7,000 of them during his lifetime. His Soma cube, a three-dimensional puzzle made from seven different pieces that can be assembled into a cube, became a popular mathematical toy. He died in 1996.
At auction, Hein's presence is defined almost entirely by the Superellipse table. With 170 items on Auctionist, tables account for the vast majority, appearing through Bukowskis, Palsgaard Kunstauktioner, Goteborgs Auktionsverk, and others. Top prices reach 12,000 to 15,755 SEK for birch and laminate versions. The Superellipse coffee table variant also trades actively.