“My design philosophy is to move objects towards more simplicity and obviousness,” Aurélien Barbry says of his design approach, which has yielded an array of pristinely pared-down furniture, lighting, and accessories for a multitude of top-tier Scandinavian brands. One of the French designer’s greatest achievements, however, might be the Sky Collection of stainless steel cocktail shakers, ice buckets, and bottle openers for the Danish silversmithing brand Georg Jensen. Marked by sinuous curves and a polished metallic sheen, the collection effortlessly combines practicality with elegance.
Now, as part of Georg Jensen’s spring launches, Sky is being expanded into a contemporary range of porcelain dinnerware and glassware that retains all the qualities that made the original barware such a success. To develop Sky’s second act, Barbry looked toward an inspiration we can all appreciate after a year of quarantine: the organic, asymmetrical shapes of clouds. “I was working on a simple outline that could catch the eyes—simple but with a little twist,” he says. “We also felt we had found a signature language that worked well. The core idea manifested clearly in the first pieces, so it felt natural to build on that and create a more extensive collection.”