Kaja Gjedebo

Kaja Gjedebo (b. 1974) was actually trained as a furniture-maker and designer, but did jewellery as second subject throughout her whole degree. As she won the Royal Society of Arts student competition for jewellery, she worked as a diamond jewellery designer for Boodle and Dunthorne before she went on a 6 month artist in recidency in Sydney, Australia. After a short stunt where she got hired to work for SOM in New York as a furniture designer (never went, 9/11 came in the way..), she has never looked back on furniture, but developed her jewellery designs both artistically and comercially.
She set up her own workshop in 2003 in the centre of Oslo with co-jewellery designer Kathrine Lindman, but has since 2009 worked from her big studio at home in the outskirts of Oslo, right by the forest in an artist recidency area.
She is inspired by objects and design spanning from 1930´s to the 1970´s, old postcards, stamps, scraps of paper, old citywalls and maps, she loves the textiles and wallpapers from this period and takes a lot of inspiration from architecture of all times.
She has done two exhibitions with clothes designer Mette Møller and a solo exhibiiton in addition to numerous group exhibitions around the world. She has been awarded a stately 3 year work-grant and been commissioned to make three big panoramas for TUI cruiseships.
KGD carefully chooses factories and craftsmen both in development and production which are either local or ethically and ecologically sustainable