Karakter Copenhagen: Publishing Colombo, Mangiarotti and the Overlooked Masters

Karakter Copenhagen doesn't design most of what it sells — it republishes it, putting furniture and lighting by 20th-century names like Joe Colombo, Angelo Mangiarotti and Bodil Kjær back into production from the original drawings. Founded by Christian Bjerg Elving and Kim Mekawi, the Copenhagen house has built its collection on a simple premise: a good idea from 1959 or 1975 doesn't need reinventing, only remaking properly.

Two founders, and a partner called Cassina

Karakter's range runs across furniture, lighting, decorative objects and gallery pieces — the kind of catalogue that reads more like an archive than a product line. In March 2019, Lifestyle Design, the design-focused arm of what has since consolidated into the Poltrona Frau Group, acquired a majority stake in the company; Cassina, part of the same group, took on international distribution afterward. Elving and Mekawi framed the deal plainly at the time: "With the legacy of design already present in our collection and the determination to create and promote future icons, we couldn't have found a better partner than Lifestyle Design." It's a house built on other people's archives that has since become part of a much larger one itself.

Reviving Joe Colombo

In June 2016, Karakter relaunched a set of Joe Colombo pieces originally drawn in the 1960s: the Chair 300, a stackable dining chair from 1965 with a wood frame and a curved seat upholstered in fabric or leather; the Domo pendant, wall and table lighting; a wood-and-leather Pouf stool; and a set of drinking glasses Colombo had designed in 1968. Colombo died in 1971, aged 41, having spent barely a decade in practice — which makes a catalogue this substantial, still being expanded more than fifty years later, a case study in what a reissue house is actually for: keeping a short, prolific career in circulation rather than in museum storage.

The desk James Bond sat at first

Bodil Kjær designed her Office Desk in 1959, while working for Contract Interiors in Boston on a commission for MIT; Danish manufacturer E. Pedersen & Søn put it into production two years later. It became known, semi-seriously, as "the most beautiful desk in the world" — and rather more concretely as the "James Bond desk", after it appeared behind M and other officials in three of the earliest Bond films. Form Portfolios, which manages Kjær's archive, chose Karakter to bring it back partly for a personal reason: Christian Elving had loved the desk as a child, visiting his grandparents' home. Karakter has produced it since 2018 in lacquered walnut, natural oak and white-stained oak, paired with a brushed-steel frame available in dark grey or red. Kjær had also drawn a matching credenza and shelving, which went into production alongside the desk; sketches for a cantilevered chair, left unrealised in her lifetime, have since been built by Karakter as well.

Mangiarotti's honest materials

Angelo Mangiarotti's Castore dining table, originally designed in 1975 for Sorgente dei Mobili, is Karakter's clearest demonstration of what a faithful reissue looks like. A round tempered-glass top, roughly 1.3 metres across, sits on a marble pillar topped with a removable marble bowl — positioned so the bowl appears to be the glass's only support, an illusion softened by cork padding underneath and rounded edges on both stone elements. It's a direct expression of Mangiarotti's own principle, that each material should be "respected and used in an appropriate and honest way" — the same conviction, in different materials, that runs through FRAMA's own aluminium and marble pieces on Objena's shelf today.

Objena doesn't carry Karakter — there's no supply agreement in place, and we won't say otherwise. It's on the same research list that brought Emeco and Form & Refine into the catalogue before either had a product page here. For the broader argument on why a faithful reissue is worth paying for, read our piece on reissue masters; for why Objena names the maker, the year and the material on everything it does sell, see why we list.

Three questions

What is Karakter Copenhagen and what does it sell? Karakter is a Copenhagen design house, founded by Christian Bjerg Elving and Kim Mekawi, that publishes furniture, lighting and decorative objects — largely archival reissues of works by 20th-century designers such as Joe Colombo, Angelo Mangiarotti and Bodil Kjær, alongside pieces by contemporary names like Aldo Bakker. In March 2019, Lifestyle Design (part of what is now the Poltrona Frau Group's design portfolio) acquired a majority stake in Karakter, and Cassina began distributing the collection internationally.

Is Karakter Copenhagen furniture available at Objena? Not yet. Objena's active catalogue currently runs through Emeco, Form & Refine and FRAMA; Karakter isn't among the houses we have a supply agreement with. We're covering it as part of the ongoing research that runs ahead of the shelf — the same way we wrote about Audo Copenhagen and Vaarnii before either was for sale here.

What is the Bodil Kjær Office Desk that Karakter reissues? It's a minimalist desk Kjær designed in 1959 for MIT while working at Contract Interiors in Boston, put into production in Denmark two years later. Karakter has reintroduced it since 2018 in lacquered walnut, natural oak and white-stained oak, with a brushed-steel frame — it's sometimes called the "James Bond desk" for its appearances in three early Bond films.