Cylinda-Line
It is actually extraordinary that Cylinda-Line even exists. If today's parameters for product development, design, and marketing had been followed, Arne Jacobsen's rough sketches on a napkin would never have become the lovely range of stainless steel applied art which could celebrate its 25th anniversary in 1992 and is still being produced. First of all, there was no technology at the beginning of the 1960s that was able to transform Arne Jacobsen's ideas about hollowware with a cylindrical overall form into stainless steel. Secondly, it was daring to launch a range of no less than 18 pieces without preliminary market research on a largely uncharted audience.

Every "modern" product development or marketing manager would have rejected these conditions, but Stelton knew nothing about such things at the time. Cylinda-Line's beginnings do indeed sound like the story of the bumblebee that shouldn't be able to fly.

Stelton was founded at the beginning of the 1960s to sell stainless steel hollowware from the company Dansk Rustfri in Fårevejle Stationsby, a little town in northwest Zealand. The range consisted of sauceboats, platters, salad bowls etc., and a young man named Peter Holmblad was hired to sell them. Their design was mediocre, or actually, nonexistent. It was supposed to be the basis for a range of products with a more contemporary look.

The 1960s was the golden age of Danish design, and one of the leading figures was the architect Arne Jacobsen. Through family connections, Peter Holmblad was able to present his ideas to Arne Jacobsen, but Jacobsen had plenty to do with new buildings, furniture design, and other things, and declined. Peter Holmblad was insistent, though, and during a dinner party - almost as if saying, "The hell with it" - Jacobsen sketched a few cylindrical forms on his napkin. This is how the range should look: terse, logical, and functional, That was 1964, but three years passed before the range was first produced.

Stainless steel is an exceptionally demanding material. If it is incorrectly or badly worked, steel shows its obstinate nature in the form of tension stripes and uneven surfaces. And this is the material Arne Jacobsen chose for his terse cylindrical and angular shapes. It was an almost impossible task, and it was actually necessary to develop new machines and welding techniques to meet Arne Jacobsen's requirements for seamless tubes with perfect, brushed surfaces. It is precisely Jacobsen's unwavering demand for perfection that has made Cylinda-Line something special, in the first place, and also given Stelton unique know-how in the field of stainless steel. And this, in turn, has made it largely impossible for others to copy its products. Few others master this technology, and the company is still leaps ahead, now that the production line has been supplemented with high-tech, computercontrolled pressing machines, laser cutters, rolling equipment, and brushing machines.

Cylinda-Line was put on the market in 1967, and immediately attracted considerable attention for its serene, functionalist design. The range got off to a flying start when it was awarded the ID prize, founded that same year by the Danish Design Council. Several other prizes followed, including the International Design Award of the American Institute of Interior Designers in 1968. Parts of the range were given the highest sign of recognition when they were included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Danish Museum of Decorative Art in Copenhagen.

When it was launched in 1967, Cylinda-Line consisted of 18 products, and new pieces were added until 1971. Shortly before Arne Jacobsen's death that year, he had completed drawings for a Multi-Set serving platter for the Cylinda-Line range. Today Cylinda-Line consists of 39 products which live up to the demand for a beautiful, functional, and practical hollowware range in contemporary design. And these were the requirements the company set for itself over 25 years ago.