Golden Blossom Honey
Gustav JensenIn promotional advertisements Gustav Jensen
( 1898 – 1942 ?) called himself a “Designer to
Industry.” He designed some of the most
appealing packaging and advertising of the
late 1920 s and early 1930 s. “His peers called
him a Designers’ Designer,” recalled Paul
Rand, who, in his early twenties, fruitlessly
tried to get a job at Jensen’s one-man studio.
Rand later borrowed Jensen’s beaux-artsstyle
before developing his own modern vocabulary.
Jensen developed the elegant identity for
Charles of the Ritz and other stylish
companies, but his most enduring design was
the packaging for Golden Blossom Honey,
which has kept virtually the same label for
some fifty years.
Enigma shrouds Gustav Jensen’s life.
He is known to have been born in Copen-
hagen, Denmark, in 1898 ; his father was a
banker and lawyer, and his mother came from a
long line of ministers. He studied philosophy at the University of
Copenhagen, but with his deep bass voice he wanted instead to become an
opera singer. He developed an interest in architecture, however, and
architecture somehow led to an absorption in art, and art caused him to
pursue aesthetic beauty in typography and printed design. Jensen produced
a large body of work for companies like General Motors, Westvaco,
DuPont, Edison, American Telephone and Telegraph, Morrel Meats,
Gilbert Products, and more. He brought a special elegance to a marketplace
obsessed with fashionable conceits. Although making purely functional
merchandise was not his primary concern, Jensen believed that the designer
had a responsibility to provide the public with appealing products. “The
public,” he wrote, “is being imposed upon all the time, given stones for
bread; the kind of bread we artists can give the public is hard sincere work
straight from ourselves. Never mind what the style racketeers say.”
Jensen’s approach was decorative but not ornate. His work is
characterized by economically applied textures derived in part from the400