Opal pendant – Carl Hansen

In 1934, at the age of 19, Esben Klint completed his apprenticeship as a cabinetmaker, winning a bronze medal. The following year, he graduated from the Copenhagen Master School of Construction. Esben Klint then spent a year at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, after which he began working in various design studios in Copenhagen and abroad. He also worked for his father, Kaare Klint, on the Bethlehem Church in Copenhagen, for Mogens Koch on furniture for the Skive hospital, for the Swedish architect E.G. Asplund on furniture for a school in Karlshamn, Sweden, on industrial design for the Philips radio factory in Eindhoven, the Netherlands - and with his close friend Børge Mogensen on the design of wooden school furniture. In 1948, he joined the Danish Association of Architects, becoming a board member in 1950.

Esben Klint's main source of inspiration came from his travels throughout Denmark and abroad, where his aim was always to research and experiment with architecture. He traveled to the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Poland and the then USSR. In Denmark, Esben Klint liked to travel to the west coast of Jutland and South Jutland, where he had also spent a lot of time as a child.

Esben Klint opened his own design studio in 1954 and, after his father's death, took over many of his father's unfinished works, including St. Nicholas Church and the Christian churches in the Danish towns of Aabenraa and Sønderborg respectively. Esben Klint considered his work on the completion of Copenhagen's Grundtvig Church to be one of his greatest achievements - a task begun by his grandfather PV Jensen-Klint in 1921, continued by his father Kaare Klint and completed by Esben Klint, the third generation of the family. To this day, Grundtvig Church remains one of Copenhagen's most striking and spectacular buildings.

In addition to his design studio, Esben Klint also worked full-time with Royal Building Inspector Nils Koppel, where he was responsible for the supervision and restoration of state churches and castles.

Hard-working, meticulous and a perfectionist, Esben Klint approaches his projects with a high degree of seriousness and attention to detail. Despite his collaborations with some of the greatest architects and designers of the time, Esben Klint was and remains his father's disciple - a fact clearly demonstrated by his church furnishings, lamps and furniture. He exhibited several times at the Charlottenborg Spring Exhibition, the Copenhagen Cabinetmakers' Guild Exhibition and at Købestævnet in the Danish town of Fredericia with his friend Børge Mogensen. Esben Klint died of illness in 1969 - aged just 53.