During visits to his grandparents’ home, Christian Elving, CEO and founder of the Danish design company Karakter, often gravitated to his grandfather’s office desk, a rectangular rosewood tabletop with a quartet of recessed drawers that seemingly levitated over sleek metal legs he joyfully played between.

He also recalls the versatile piece coming to the rescue during holiday feasts, morphing into an additional dining table that accommodated an extended assortment of hungry guests. “It’s close to my heart,” says Elving, “something that I came to appreciate through my family.”

The minimalist yet graceful desk Elving was so enamoured with as a child came courtesy of Bodil Kjær, the pioneering Danish architect, furniture designer, professor and researcher who dreamed it up in 1959 for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology while she was working for Contract Interiors in Boston; two years later it would be produced by Denmark’s own E Pedersen & Søn.

Various brands clamoured to reissue the desk in recent years, but licensing agent Form Portfolios, which oversees Kjær’s archive, selected Karakter because Elving’s heady memories made a distinct impression. “Form Portfolios knew and understood that we would give the desk a lot of attention, not just put it in a corner of the collection,” says Elving.

Since 2018, Karakter has slowly reintroduced the office desk to the world, showcasing it in lacquered walnut, natural oak and white-stained oak varieties juxtaposed with a brushed stainless-steel frame, in moody dark grey or Japanese red versions, the latter a nod to an iteration that Kjær conceived for Polaroid Corporation.

Other than increasing the frame height by 3cm in response to rising chair heights (Kjær decided the subtle move should come via the vertical bars), the desk has stayed true to its original vision, bringing to light the 92-year-old Kjær’s much-overlooked oeuvre to new audiences – just as re-releases from Carl Hansen & Søn and Fritz Hansen have done – along the way.