Skandium is owned by three Scandinavians living in London who could not find, wherever we travelled, a shop specifically dedicated only to modern Scandinavian design and its heritage. We decided to bring the new, innovative ideas pouring out of Scandinavia together with old, well established design icons and created Skandium. Today the company has two shops under the Skandium banner and one fully owned Marimekko shop. We also do wholesale, contract sales and interior design.

Magnus Englund (Managing Director) is Swedish with a background in fashion wholesale and retailing, and works as a freelance writer when time allows.

Chrystina Schmidt (Marketing Director) is Finnish and worked as a fashion and life style photographer for over ten years.

Christopher Seidenfaden (Finance Director) is Danish with a background in business journalism and finances. His family built up the Danish lighting manufacturer Louis Poulsen, famous for the PH lamps.

The first Skandium shop opened in 1999 on Wigmore Street in central London, retailing furniture, lighting, glassware, ceramics, textiles, kitchenware and books in a lifestyle concept presentation. Skandium also developed relationships with architects, interior designers and contractors by supplying products to small and large projects. We further offer a very popular wedding list service.

In 2001 Skandium was invited to open a large shop-in-shop at the famous department store Selfridges in central London.

Since 2002 Skandium Ltd is the exclusive agent for the Finnish textile brand Marimekko for the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland. We also own and operate a Marimekko shop in central London, the only Marimekko shop in the UK. We are also the exclusive UK agent for the brands Asplund, Le Klint and Woodnotes.

In 2004, we moved to fashionable Marylebone High Street and increased the shop size to 420 m2 (4,500 sqft).

In 2005, we employed on average 21 full time members of staff.

What is Scandinavian Design?

The term Scandinavian Design is generally used to describe a style of products that first took shape in the 1930s but reached international mass markets in the 1950s. Although the style undoubtedly owed a debt to both US and Italian sources it was firmly based on design from Scandinavia and used natural materials to create a classically elegant yet very contemporary style with a simple but comfortable refinement.

Scandinavian designers integrated a radical social and political dimension with their work where functionalism and simplicity were the corner stones for improving the welfare of the people. Today, design objects manufactured in Scandinavia between the 1930s and the 1960s have become collectors items and are fetching increasingly higher prices at auctions in London, New York and Tokyo.

The products coming out of Scandinavia today are still well made and ergonomically sound yet beautiful and refined. It might be that today's Scandinavian design products will become collectors items in the future; today they are just beautiful and practical objects to own and use.