Copenhagen's Iconic Benches Stolen off the Street

 

Well everyone grew up and instead of coveting that Teddy Ruxpin  bear or the Christmas Furby, some of us have aimed higher with good design in good landscape furniture.  As noted in Citylab.com  The “Copenhagen bench”, a beautiful  Danish bench with clean lines has become popular because of its classic lines. So popular that “across the Danish capital, thieves are targeting a local design icon—the classic Copenhagen bench”.  Designed in the 1880’s “the benches are one of those visual clues that Danish people instantly associate with Copenhagen, like the Wallace Fountains of Paris or the now defunct red telephone boxes of London”.

And everyone wants their own. This year 45 benches have been stolen so far, at a cost of about 1,765 Canadian dollars a bench. That’s about six  benches being pilfered a month. Here’s the strange part-you can actually buy the bench at retail stores, although in different colours from the iconic Copenhagen gray metal and green wood. Even if the stolen benches were being sold on the “black market”, it would be obvious with graffiti and wear that the bench had a public life.  Too bad there were not innocuous GPS chips so that the benches could notify the municipality about which private garden they had been reallocated to.