Notes

Harald Nielsen designed Pyramid in 1926, and it remains the boldest expression of his break from Georg Jensen's own Art Nouveau naturalism toward a cleaner, architectural Art Deco vocabulary. The pattern's name and its signature stepped, tiered profile, seen here in the flat, layered tops of the covers, were drawn directly from the contemporary fascination with ancient Egypt following Howard Carter's exhumation of Tutankhamun's tomb in the early 1920s. Set against the smoothly flaring bodies and dark ebony handles, that geometric stepped motif gives the service its distinctive silhouette, a design that reads as strikingly modern against the more traditional revival styles still common in silver of the period.