Grethe Meyer: Designing Danish Modernism

Author: Grethe Meyer, Isabel Bernadette Brammer, Christina B. Kjeldsen
Format: Hardcover | 300 pages
Dimensions: 19.56 x 2.54 x 24.38 cm
Publication date: 10 March 2026

An illustrated biography of the trailblazing woman designer who created a distinctly modern vision of home life for the postwar generation.

The life of Danish midcentury architect and designer Grethe Meyer (1918–2008) touches on design, culture, and the history of women. It reveals the challenges of being both a single mother and a groundbreaking architect in an era when men dominated the profession. Her celebrated designs, shaped by the routines and demands of family life, helped define a new idea of domestic living grounded in the modern, liberating ideals embraced by the now-legendary postwar generation of visionary architects and designers.

Arranged in chronological order, Designing Danish Modernism tells her extraordinary story in vivid detail, drawing on in-depth archival research and extended interviews with Meyer's friends, colleagues, and relatives. The book also brings Meyer's own voice to the forefront, weaving in excerpts from her notes and speeches. While giving special attention to her Blue Line tableware and her famous Firepot stoneware range, Designing Danish Modernism also showcases her early modular cabinets, her later cutlery, and the many other inventive designs she created along the way.