Wonder shows some of Designmuseum Denmark’s most wonderful objects. The exhibition tells the story of how a thing becomes an object, in a private collection or in a museum.

Throughout the five rooms of the exhibition, guests are welcomed into the 19th century home of a private collector, they can walk through a recreation of the museum’s archive, where objects are displayed as they are normally stored, and get the chance to experience some of the most special objects in the collection in an enormous 17-meter-long display case.

Two unique collections meet

The exhibition Wonder presents two collections of Japanese sword mountings, originally part of a samurai armour. Since the founding of the museums of Arts and Design throughout Europe in the second half of the 18th century, the acquisition of Japanese arts and crafts was extremely popular. And Denmark was no exception.

The museum’s first director, Pietro Krohn, collected these sword mountings, called tsubas, until his death in 1905. In time, this collection ended up in storage. At the same time, a Danish doctor called Hugo Halberstadt also privately collected more than 1700 tsubas, which he donated to the museum in 1940. His collection is one of the finest in the world, if not the finest – and has been exhibited at Designmuseum Denmark since the donation.

For the first time ever, the two collections will be shown side by side, making it possible to get a closer look at the exquisite Japanese craftmanship.