Peter Karpf worked as an apprentice to cabinetmaker Fritz Hansen before he in 1961 began studying architecture at the Royal Danish Academy – the school of design in Copenhagen. In 1964 Karpf made his debut as a furniture designer at the exhibition of the Cabinetmaker’s guild with the Rocket chair.
Since the 1960’s Karpf worked on the idea to press a complete chair in one single piece of plywood. The result of this worked was the chair Nxt produced by the Swedish manufacturer Swedese and launched at the exhibition Sweden Next in Milan 1991. Later Karpf begun a collaboration with the comoany IForm for whom he designed a whole collection of the plywood chairs called Voxia. For this collection Karpf was awarded the Bruno Mathsson Prize in 2002.
From the 1960’s Karpf has been the recipient of several other awards such as the Danish National Endowment for the Arts (1967), the Forsnäs Award (1993) and Red Dot Best Selection for NXT in 2001. Karpf has worked together with designers such as Piet Hein, Grete Jalk, Arne Jacobsen and Erik Herløw. He has designed for companies such as Swedish Materia, for which he made the Pipe chair for in 2011, and for Danish Architectmade.
Peter Karpf is represented at a.o. the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Museum für Angewandtete Kunst in Munich, Stedeljik Museum in Amsterdam, Victoria & Albert Museum in London and at the Museum of Furniture Studies in Stockholm.
