Garde Hvalsøe has been crafting bespoke kitchen and interior solutions since the 1990s. The Danish designer/maker studio is synonymous with quality and simplification. Founder Søren Hvalsøe Garde and CEO Søren Lundh Aagaard and their team have taken the art of furniture making to another level. They create honest, thoughtful, enduring designs featuring natural materials such as wood, stone and metal, but with a contemporary, Danish-style twist. Interior design fans across the globe recognise their passion for cabinetmaking and craftsmanship. The Garde Hvalsøe style is focused on natural materials that offer textural quality, diversity and historical roots. Key to their design is the grain in old oak and stone, which they say “tells the story of life in the wood over hundreds of years, while the veins and fossils in the natural stone tell the story of the very creation of the earth.”
Their contemporary designs feature elevated cabinetry and spectacular kitchen islands that are tantamount to the design studio. But they offer solutions across the interior spectrum, and their projects have included wine rooms, showrooms, and everything in between. Each project has the signature Garde Hvalsøe aesthetics. Whether they are working on a luxurious holiday home in Scotland or a cafe in central Copenhagen, the clean-line aesthetic highlights the materials as paramount. We love their passion for quality materials, mid-century aesthetics and meticulous craftsmanship.
Drawing similarities between our own design style and the sensibilities of the Garde Hvalsøe studio, we designed the Richlite Kitchen. The large country manor home was ideal for our contemporary kitchen design. We partitioned the large room with ‘crittal’ style glazed panels allowing for a large central kitchen island, walk-in pantry, boot room and scullery. Central to the design was the handmade island which was cut by hand from a single section of oak, allowing the grain to weave its way along the entire length naturally. In addition, we included exposed finger joint detail to highlight the talent of Papilio’s master cabinet makers. For the work surface, we decided on a single sheet of fabricated Richlite, giving this contemporary kitchen some of the best materials available. To complete the look were cascading oak side panels, each timber deliberately selected due to the imperfections, which were resin filled and held firm with hand-cut brass ties. The Richlite Kitchen was finished with a pair of bespoke black limestone sinks in a black limestone worktop, complete with visible fossils that date back millions of years, a pair of brass taps designed by Studio Ore, and bespoke antiqued brass handles.
