Our story
Behind Kodanska is designer and CEO, Marie Graff. Kodanska means Copenhagen Street in Czech and is the name of the street in Prague where Marie and her family lived for a number of years. Marie's husband, Anders, was stationed in the country and this gave Marie a completely new everyday life with plenty of time and space for her innate creative urge and drive within entrepreneurship.
This is where the idea for the company Kodanska arose. Marie was missing a salt jar in the home and could not find a version where both function and aesthetics went into a higher unity. This was the start of a collaboration with a local potter, who made Marie's ideas about the ideal salt jar a reality. The salt jar quickly became popular with friends and family and before long Marie was at a fair for up-coming Danish designers.
The Kodanska adventure suddenly took off. At the same time, Marie's interest in Czech glass art grew and new products were created in collaboration with a local glassblower in Prague.
In 2013, we turned our entire everyday life upside down and moved from Denmark to the Czech Republic.
We got an apartment in the center of Prague and came to live on the street called Kodanska, which translated into Danish means Copenhagen Street.
For two years I was on maternity leave with our second child, Villum. Together we spent the time building our social life in Prague and getting to know the city and the Czech culture.
I became part of the creative environment in Prague and started playing with the idea of my own designs.
I started with designs in ceramics.
I packed the car and showed the first designs on the Danish design market FindersKeepers.
After five fantastic years in Prague, we moved back to Denmark and settled in Skibet outside Vejle.
I participated in my first fair in 2018. Here I was part of the creators community, which represents small upcoming designers at the Formland Design Fair in Herning.
Kodanska was nominated for design of the year with our new glass collection, Danish Summer.
Kodanska has since participated in several fairs at home and abroad. Formland design & interior fair has helped pave the way for Kodanska on the Danish market.
At Kodanska, we have always worked with handmade production. First with a focus on ceramics and now glass.
I have always had family close to me and I love sharing my journey with them.
I have had them in the production since they were very small...
... and they still love to get involved in production, where they now also have an opinion on the designs we make.
.Today, the family has grown bigger, so when I'm not running Kodanska, I try to keep track of our four little barn owls at home.
At Kodanska, today we focus exclusively on glass.
With a focus on innovative and innovative designs and production methods.
Our values
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We only make handmade products , therefore each product is unique.
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We never compromise on quality , which is why we have a total of 6 quality checks that support our high quality requirements.
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Our glassblowers are an integral part of the Kodanska team , therefore we organize our production so that they have continuous work throughout the year.
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We value fairness over discounts, therefore we pay our manufacturer the same amount for one product as for 100 products, so we do not work with volume discounts.
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We value propriety and good business ethics as crucial elements in Kodanska's culture, this means that we keep what we promise and are very responsive to our business partners.
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We ensure transparency by including our customers in the engine room, right from the initial design process to final production.
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Customers help to define our business , as we develop in step with the customers' wishes and needs.
No Waste Design
How can we create the best and most responsible designs? How can we think creatively and push the work with designs in the best direction? These are some of the key words in the considerations we constantly make at Kodanska. As part of this work, through creative design processes we succeed in creating clean 'no waste designs', where all glass is 100% used in production.
Our vision is that our 'no waste designs' will permeate our entire product range in the future. We therefore work extensively and continuously to further develop our current production processes. A process that requires an experimental approach with new design processes and production patterns.
No change without support
We cannot accomplish this mission by ourselves. Because there is no company that can reach its goals with its own objectives alone – we need our customers to see the value of our work and support our mission.
As a consumer, we make a choice every time we put money somewhere, and conversely, as a company, we have a task in relation to creating a proper product that is valuable to the customer, both in an economic and responsible context. It requires direction, visibility and action on our part.
We therefore use every opportunity to communicate our ambitions so that our mission can succeed together with our customers.
Our work with no waste designs is and will be an ongoing matter of the heart for us.