How the Dinesen family’s country escape represents a new era for Scandinavian style

‘In this new world where architects shouldn’t build new things all the time, we see ourselves more as gardeners, nurturing and pruning with a lot of care,’ says Alexander Vedel Ottenstein. It’s a fitting analogy for one half of Mentze Ottenstein who, together with partner (in life and work) Mathias Mentze, was tasked with the reinvention of the Dinesen family’s country home, set within 60 acres of forest and meadow near the 127-year-old timber company’s sawmill and headquarters in the rural town of Jels, southern Denmark.

Original cabinets and the back wall are painted in a classic Danish colour, ‘Kitchen Green’ from Linolie & Pigment. The marble-topped breakfast table and chairs were custom-designed by Mentze Ottenstein and built in Dinesen oak. A woven pendant light by Steen Hedegaard Madsen hangs beside the window, while the shelves are stocked with glassware by Alexander Kirkeby and hand-turned Georgian bowls by Peter Møller Rasmussen and Christian Vennerstrøm

Describing their approach to the property – a traditional Jutland longhouse that had been lovingly restored by architect and family friend Jørgen Overby in the early 2000s – as akin to ‘rewilding’, Mathias and Alexander set about turning what was a home into a showroom and guesthouse, as well as shifting what people have come to expect from this brand.

The house, say the duo, has set many trends. Featured in advertising imagery over the years, its white walls and pale wooden flooring, dotted with iconic mid-century furniture by the likes of Arne Jacobsen, were part of the design landscape at the time that helped to shape the prevalence of Scandinavian minimalism.

Danish architects and designers Mathias Mentze and Alexander Ottenstein, co-founders of Mentze Ottenstein

The dining table is from the ‘Pawson Furniture Collection’ and the chair was hand-crafted by Dinesen’s founder, Hans Peter Dinesen

Mathias and Alexander widened the design repertoire in all of the rooms: now, you’ll find contemporary pieces like John Pawson’s collection for the brand (launched in 2024) alongside a chair handcrafted by Dinesen’s founder Hans Peter Dinesen. ‘That is my great-great-grandfather’s work. The pieces really suit each other well. There is a joy in mixing the traditional and the modern,’ says the current Hans Peter, the company’s art and brand director.

He first moved into the house with his parents, brother and sister (both of whom also work for the family firm) when he was around 13, and his memories from that time are connected to the surrounding wildlife rather than to the home itself – fishing in the river and exploring the land.

A sofa, armchairs and coffee table from John Pawson’s eponymous collection for Dinesen. The throws are vintage American quilts and the wall lamp is custom-made for the project by Christian + Jade. The flooring throughout the downstairs rooms is Dinesen’s wide ‘Douglas’ plank

It’s the outdoors, appropriately, that underpins Mentze Ottenstein’s new colour palette. Gone is the stark white, replaced by a spectrum of natural shades that merge from light to dark across the enfilade on the ground floor. ‘It changes the psychology of the rooms completely,’ says Mathias.

For one of the new downstairs bedrooms (added to increase the capacity of the house so it can now sleep eight), Mathias and Alexander created a bespoke wallpaper by hand-printing leaves found on the grounds – a nod to the work of historic Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus and 1950s furniture and prints by Svenskt Tenn.

A bed designed by Mentze Ottenstein features cut-out leaf motifs. The wood-block side tables were chosen to showcase the Dinesen wood

Hidden behind doors on the first floor, this extra bedroom is painted in ochre, similar to the only domestic Danish mineral pigment called Løvskal-ochre

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Upstairs, the links to nature continue, with leaf motifs cut into the joinery around the staircase and the headboards of some of the beds. Meanwhile, a formerly redundant space under the eaves has been turned into a box bedroom, drenched in a deep-ochre pigment synonymous with Jutland. ‘We wanted to create more intimacy in the spaces and for each room to have an identity,’ explains Alexander.

Having already donated some of the nearby land to a summer school for the Royal Danish Academy’s architecture faculty, Dinesen wants the house to allow them to interact in many more ways with the design community at large. ‘It’s the family’s hope to invite different collaborators here, maybe to do residencies for architects,’ says Hans Peter. ‘We can always add more stories to this house.’ dinesen.com; mentzeottenstein.com