Before a recent trip to Denmark, I had only a hazy idea of what the country’s design and craft was like. I knew about the mid-century modernist giants Hans Wegner and Finn Juhl, who made exquisite furniture, and Arne Jacobsen, known for his Egg and Swan chairs. But I couldn’t really distinguish Danish work from that found elsewhere in Scandanavia; I simply assumed it would all be pared-down and functional, mainly in wood and with organic forms.

Louise Campbell’s The More The Merrier, a modular design in rubber and steel with individual candleholders

Only a few hours after I touched down in Denmark, I discovered this was an out-of-date impression. Although it has taken decades for Danish designers to move beyond the legacy of their forebears, while still appreciating it, it seems they have finally done so. Functionalism is no longer the be-all-and-end-all in Denmark.

“There are two mindsets on the Danish design and craft scenes,” says Lars Kaerulf Moller, director of Bornholm’s Art Museum. “There are those who are nationalist and cling to Danish craft traditions and those who want to be more international. But the latter is winning out.”

If there is anywhere where history should be appreciated, it is Bornholm, a 587 sq km island with a population of 45,000, located 145km southeast of Copenhagen and 40km south of Sweden. Gently hilly with a rugged coastline, the fishing-colony-turned-summer-holiday-spot has long been a mecca for artists. Taking advantage of its natural clay deposits, ceramics factories flourished here in the 19th century and, in the 1930s, the craftsmen employed by them began to set up independent workshops. Landscape painters also arrived in the early 20th century, drawn to the island’s strong, clear light and, in the 1950s, the avant-garde art movement Cobra, co-founded by Dane Asger Jorn, followed. Twenty years later glass artists began to congregate and, in 1999, a glass and ceramics school was set up. Today, Bornholm hosts a glass and ceramics biennale, showcasing work from all over the world.

I visited Baltic Sea Glass, a studio set up in 1981 by Peter Hunner, an American who moved to Bornholm in the 1970s, and his partner Maibritt Jonsson. From their converted hen house with whitewashed interiors overlooking the sea, the duo makes vases and bowls with natural, cellular forms and patterns resembling maize, honeycomb or snowflakes, as well as selling functionalist table-top pieces by other local artists.

The natural world is a theme for other Bornholm designers too. Else Leth Nissen blows and moulds glass into irregularly shaped bowls embedded with leaf, bird and acorn motifs while Evan Brandt’s coiled pots eccentrically incorporate organic materials not commonly associated with ceramics, such as used coffee grounds. Hans-Henning Pedersen makes monumental yet also wafer-thin wooden vessels out of tree trunks with forms that are somewhat wayward, partly dictated by the wood’s knots and grain and Tyke Axel Holmm specialises in wooden storage boxes with super-precise, geometric marquetry. Some of the work, which honours yet plays with Danish tradition, is featured in an exhibition at London’s Flow Gallery.

Komplot’s Nobody chair

In Copenhagen, by contrast, designers seem to take a much more conceptual approach and have a slick, rather than homespun, aesthetic. My first stop was the studio of one of Denmark’s best-known design outfits, Komplot, co-founded by Boris Berlin and Poul Christiansen, who created the best-selling, meringue-shaped 172 light for Danish company Le Klimt in 1971.

The company’s best-known piece is Nobody, a chair produced by young Danish manufacturer Hay and made of one piece of felt that, heated and pushed into a mould, stiffens and solidifies. The innovation, Berlin says, comes from the material. “Because it’s made of felt, it looks upholstered but it has no upholstery.” Yet functionalism also comes into play, serving as a draw for local buyers. “The Danish love their homes and prefer them to feel personal,” he explains. “Because of Denmark’s tradition of social democratic politics, designers don’t generally work for the luxury market.”

Next on my itinerary was Muuto, a company set up in 2006 by former consultants Peter Bonnen and Kristian Byrge to sell funky and highly diverse “new Nordic” wares from all over Scandinavia. “Young designers have long felt overshadowed by 1950s and 1960s Danish design but they are now finding their own identity,” Bonnen says. “The new wave of Danish designers are more playful. They also use a broad range of materials, not just wood.”

Its stable includes Ole Jensen, Pil Bredahl, Cecilie Manz and the half-Danish-half-British, Copenhagen-based Louise Campbell, whose candelabra The More the Merrier is a modular design in rubber and steel with individual candleholders to be added ad infinitum. It is practical but also maximalist; Campbell herself describes it as “everything but streamlined”.

Cecilie Manz, who works out of a workshop complex on the outskirts of Copenhagen, navigates the same balance between function and fine art with, for example, her Pluralis chair, which has stools attached to its legs, one facing in the opposite direction. “It symbolises divorced but remarried couples with half-brothers and half-sisters who live together, whether they like it or not,” she explains.

Later I popped into the Danish Crafts Centre, a 10-year-old promotional group that is decidedly anti-craftsy in spite of its name. Director Birgitte Jahn says her designers work “intellectually and artistically with products ranging from the conceptual to the commercial”. One example is Thomas Bentzen’s Stakit chair, which is shaped like a white picket fence and leans back to create an informal backrest for “use in a garden or park”. The name of the design centre’s travelling exhibition, which has touched down at Milan’s Salone Internazionale del Mobile, New York’s International Contemporary Furniture Fair and the London Design Festival, is Mindcraft.

Bentzen says he relishes Denmark’s design heritage – “it provides young designers with a great role model, unlike many other countries” – but he acknowledges his biggest influences are international names, such as the UK’s Jasper Morrison and France’s Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec.

Maria Elskaer, curator of the Danish Design Centre, confirms that the country’s creative class is entering a new era. “For it to move on from its heritage, there had to be a critical mass of younger, talented designers working in a more playful, conceptual way, which there now is,” she says. “But they still value the Danish tradition of fine craftsmanship.”