Gabriel – 175 years

October 21, 2026

A white mill building with a tower, as an archive drawing beside a photograph of it today

The first metre of cloth: Gabriel at 175

This year Gabriel turns 175. Its anniversary book, Interwoven, opens at an excavation: the old turbine house in Aalborg where the company was born.

In 1851 Kjærs Mølle, a watermill on the Østeraa stream on the outskirts of Aalborg, began turning wool into cloth. The first metre of cloth was made there, by the power of the river. Its founders chose the site “not for beauty, but for opportunity”. The river gave power, the region gave skills, and customers were close by.

Gabriel sums up its founding logic in one line:

“You take what is fine, you bind it with care, and you create something that lasts.”

Each of the qualities that make Gabriel the best today can be traced back to that mill.

Designed with purpose

The mill made woollen clothing first. Early in the 20th century it made its first woollen upholstery fabrics, and the business turned towards furniture.

In the 1960s Tove Kindt-Larsen drew Savak, a striped wool that went onto icons of Danish furniture design. Sixty years on, Savak NU continues it, with a softer yarn and a new palette by Gabriel’s creative director, Cenk Kivrikoglu.

Gabriel designs to directions rather than trends. Every couple of years the design team sets a framework, and new colours and weaves are developed inside it, so each one works with the rest of the library. As the team puts it: “Aesthetic is also a function. Not an extra, but a requirement.”

TwillWool, released in 2024, is one of the newest results: a diagonal twill in New Zealand wool, designed by Luisa Allegri.

Designers at a table of colour cards, yarn cones and fabric samples — From Interwoven, Gabriel’s 175th anniversary book. Photo: Jan Laumark.

Quality you can feel

In Gabriel’s weaving rooms, operators listen to the looms. A small change in the beat tells them something is pulling too hard. The best of them run a finger across the cloth as it moves, feeling for a tight thread before the eye could see it.

Gabriel has turned that craft into hundreds of requirements, designed to ensure every fabric leaves the mill fault free. Claims from end users run at 0.02% a year. The makers of Gabriel’s looms say they see them run faster there than anywhere else.

“The Gabriel standard is not negotiable,” says Kurt Nedergaard, Gabriel’s Director of CSR and Quality.

A man in glasses running his hand over ochre cloth — From Interwoven, Gabriel’s 175th anniversary book. Photo: Jan Laumark.

Responsible for decades

Gabriel’s responsibility began with the river. In 1851 it took measures to protect the water quality of the stream that powered the mill.

In the 1980s Gabriel took heavy metals out of its dyes, and in 1996 it introduced ISO 14001. Today 83% of its fabrics carry the EU Ecolabel.

Its Loop system starts with offcuts. Fabric cut away in a furniture factory carries almost the same environmental burden as a finished textile, and it was never used. Gabriel collects offcuts from its own production and from customers, including Steelcase, and turns them into new fabric. Loop won the Danish Design Award in 2024. Cura Loop takes the next step, made entirely from textile waste, including post-consumer material.

Folds of green Cura Loop fabric — Cura Loop. Photo: Gabriel.

Built to be kept

The mill survived a devastating fire, two world wars and a shortage of raw materials. Gabriel describes its long-term strength as “disciplined continuity”: the same fundamental choices, repeated carefully and consistently.

One chair at Gabriel has worn the same Chess Royal cover, a 100% wool fabric, since 1998. Savak is still in the range. Every Gabriel fabric carries a 10-year guarantee.

Shelves of labelled yarn cones — From Interwoven, Gabriel’s 175th anniversary book. Photo: Jan Laumark.

175 years on

Interwoven ends where Gabriel began, with “the first metre of cloth by the river in Aalborg”. Today Gabriel is the world’s most specified woven fabric brand, on furniture from Herman Miller, Fritz Hansen, Gubi, Flokk and Fameg.

Hume Internationale brings the Gabriel library to Australia and New Zealand, including TwillWool, Cura Loop and Comfort+.