Glass, forged by fire, is increasingly becoming a hot topic in fashion—think Coperni’s latest Swipe bags and Pat McGrath’s “glass skin” on the couture runways. Now, in Copenhagen, Annika Zobel Agerled and Josefine Frank Arthur are bringing a fashion-forward perspective to glass through their brand Akua Objects.
Founded in 2022, Akua Objects made its public debut in November last year with an exhibition of 100 unique glasses presented in a local gallery. Today, Akua (the Japanese word for water) is home to 13 collections, and is already beginning to branch out into new categories like chandeliers, decorative objects, and jewelry. The brand has also been a big hit with the fashion crowd, gracing tables at events for the likes of Sea New York, By Malene Birger, Ganni, and Cecilie Bahnsen.
Arthur, a Swede with a business degree and experience in fashion communications, runs the business, while Agerled, a Danish fashion stylist, is in charge of creative. The latter’s fascination with glass, a material that is at once durable and fragile—much like the current state of the world—comes from growing up the daughter of an antique dealer. And the collections represent a range of aesthetics: The Bertel collection, featuring female figures, pays homage to the 19th-century Danish sculptor and museum founder Bertel Thorvaldsen, while the Augusta line features mouth-watering candy stripes.
Almost all of the tableware is mouth-blown and hand-crafted in Murano, Italy, or Bohemia in the Czech Republic; both are areas with longstanding traditions of glass making. These ties to history dovetail nicely with the Akua founders’ habit of creating collections inspired by recollections of events and people; a meal shared, for example, or a book read (Blixen takes its name from the author of Out of Africa).
Don’t come looking for the spare, mid-century aesthetic that often applies to Nordic design here, however. “We are of course proud of being Scandinavian, but I don’t think that the brand reflects the Scandinavian style,” says Arthur on a call, explaining that she and Agerled have instead built Akua around the idea of conveying “glassware as poetic objects. “In the old days, glass was seen exclusively as art,” Arthur continues, noting that “the magic around glass started to disappear” during the Industrial Age with the advent of machine-made glass.
“We feel it’s Akua’s mission to make the poetic setting popular again as it was back then,” adds Agerled. “Our collections are very different because for us it’s not about choosing a trend; it’s more like we are going with our gut feeling and we get inspired by a certain situation, a memory, or a flower. But I would say that overall our biggest reference is definitely poetry. And we really like to create a universe for collectors.”
The description Agerled gives Vogue of her daring wedding ensemble closely matches how she describes the Akua aesthetic: “I would say that our universe is loose and still considered, and our designs are old-fashioned, dramatic, authentic, and draw notes from the Art Deco period.” The brand’s relation to fashion doesn’t end with the idea of dressing a table with beautiful glass objects, but extends to communications, branding, and presentation as well. “Because we have worked in fashion, we maybe are branding Akua in another way than the other glass companies,” Arthur says. “It has been quite fun to reimagine the way you shoot glasses,” adds Agerled. “All our products are shot by fashion photographers, so the whole universe is quite modern.”
Glass is a material that can be worked in many ways, and Akua embraces its diversity. “When we say poetic tableware, it also has a duality,” Arthur notes. “It’s not only that we want to see our objects to be seen and you should be evoked by seeing them, it’s also the thing about gathering families and being present and creating something. I mean, if you’re going to create memories, you need to collect them somewhere, and a good place to start is around the table.” Pull up a chair.
