af Nina Gade

foto: Lars-Erik Nielsen

A magician lives in the center of Copenhagen. If you would like to see it with your own eyes, drop in at the gallery-museum on street Ny Adelgade 12. Leaving behind your back the hectic and noisy life of the city streets, constant and endless traffic, color poverty of the traffic lights and harsh brightness of the advertisement shields, you will find yourself in a fairy-tale world where the time seems to have stopped. Classical music floats in the air, candles twinkle mysteriously, exotic birds sing in their cages, water runs in the fountains and different colors talk to every visitor on the language of multiple images. Infinite human fantasy meets here inexhaustible creativity of nature and gives rise to the beauty harmony.

You will not find any detail resembling another, but you can still recognize the individual style of the creator in each and every one of them.The name of the creator is Tage Andersen. No doubt, that Tage is a fairy-tale master, as well as the famous Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen. There is only one slight difference: Tage depicts the world and talks to us with the help of flowers and plants. This ability showed up already when he was a child, but only due to his persistence and constant capacity for work he managed to develop his gift as a florist and designer. Today he is well-known and recognized in his own country as well as all over the world.

Tage Andersen was born in 1947 in a small town called Heltborg in the North-west of Jutland. In order to begin independent life as soon as possible, he was educated as a baker, later he said that he gained this education not in vain, it helped him to create unique compositions, supplementing and renovating different decoration art genres, starting with furniture design end ending with table lay-out.

But all that began with the feeling of love to colours and understanding of the rich colour language. Giving up on making cakes and candies twenty-year old Tage chooses to follow his destiny and intuition. He decides to take the risk and open his first flower boutique in the small town of Kjellerup. Tage is constantly searching for new color combinations, studying carefully the creative power of nature, supplementing it with his own sense of art.

Success inspires Tage and he moves his business further to Viborg in a couple of years. Flower compositions are not enough anymore, he begins to experiment with glass, metal, wood, stone and textile. He finds out new ways to combine flowers, plants, fruits with different materials, evoking new images, moods and associations. Continuing his work as a florist Tage starts working with interior design. More and more people turn to him with job offers to design their rooms and buildings’ interior. His regular clients are owners of private companies, saloons, clubs and restaurants. Tage’s creative ideas are endless, his potential is inexhaustible. His name gains more and more recognition in Denmark and one lucky day he is offered the position as designer for the Danish royal family.

Tage Andersen moves to Copenhagen and takes part in designing the interior of the Amalienborg, Charlottenborg and Rosenborg castles. During that time he opens a flower shop in Kongens Nyorv (square in Copenhagen) and the shop turns into one of the most famous ones in the city.

In 1987 Tage moves to Ny Adelsgade 12 in an antique house with a tiny pretty yard. It turns into a flower boutique named “Couronne de Lierre” and serves him as his home as well as his workshop, greenhouse, museum and just a wonderful place with a special atmosphere where the candid flower souls talk to visitors, where everything is devoted to grace and beauty. Here you can order an exclusive bouquet, unique decorative composition or just have a rest, listen to music and observe “Couronne de Lierre” eccentric décor.

“That is my small world in this world, says Tage Andersen, a place, that gives me inspiration and rest from the everyday fuss that seems to absorb us quite often. I understood long ago: in order to create something special, inimitable, I have to enter my own world of fantasy and imagination. “Courone de Lierre” gives me this opportunity…”

During the 20 years of living and working in “Couronne de Lierre” Tage managed to work on and fulfill a lot of interesting projects and gain recognition not only in the Scandinavian countries and in Europe, but also in the USA and Japan. It is enough to mention, that Tage’s works were exhibited several times and were a great success in the National Art Museum of Denmark (Statens Museum for for Kunst), as well as in other famous museums of the world. Tage evolved to become a professional master of the gardening art. Many experts consider that Tage cannot be compared to anyone else in his ability to combine natural forms with the elements of sculpture and flower compositions. In the run of multiple years he was designing parks and gardens in Denmark, Sweden, England and America. For his gift to listen to nature and create, not destroying but building on and underlining its beauty, he is called the Michelangelo of the gardening art.

Tage Andersen says: “I have always strived to work out my personal art style, but my only teacher has always been and will remain nature itself. Only nature offers me a wide choice of necessary materials I work with in order to present them in a new way. I do it with one and only one purpose, to admit and proclaim the divine beginning of everything surrounding us: sky, trees, flowers, birds... ”

Tage is never tired to experiment with live nature and different forms of decorative art because most of his works are devoted to this primary idea. Recently, a unique exhibition of Tage Andersens works has taken place in the royal park of Rosenborg castle. His visitors were presented with a collection of compositions, where the floristic is combined with ceramics, metal, water and sculptural elements. The exhibition was named Barokt 2. In Italian the word ‘barocco’ means bizarre and unique. Barocco is an art style expressing triumphal monumentality, at the same time it contains different styles’ merge, which helps to depict all the complexity, diversity and flexibility of the world. Tage Andersen’s barocco also strives to complexity and merges fantasy and reality into one entity, depicting multiple images of our life with the help of different decorative styles. A sculpture-tree on a small wheel carriage became a symbol of the exhibition. The tree crown was done by the master as a bizarre modern haircut with the blue sky shining through it. Birds, park’s constant inhabitants, serve as a live decoration to the tree.

Andersen explains: “Birds are supposed to be an inalienable part of the sculptural compositions in Barokt 2. I use bird cages for some of my compositions but in most cases nature is a co-author of my ideas: there are always lots of birds in the royal park and they revive the sculptures by their appearance. ”

Tage Andersen turned 60 in 2007 and there is no doubt that he is on top of his creative success. All his friends know that Tage is probably the only person in Denmark that never travels anywhere or takes even one day off his work.

“A free day, why?” Tage is smiling. ”I don’t need a day off, because I enjoy my freedom in what I am doing, that’s what I was born for, that’s what makes me myself. Every day, devoted to the favorite business, makes me happy and renovated. I guess, I belong to those kinds of persons who continue working as long as they are able to breathe…”