I have often been asked, “Why Lanell?”.

When Lanell Innovation was founded back in 2001 we looked for a word that could be used to describe the who we were.

In Denmark, we have always had a very fine tradition in the production of coating paper. In the post-war period, the large Danish publishing house Gyldendal used hand-painted sticky marble paper for its classic writings (J. P. Jacobsen – Martin A. Hansen – Johannes V. Jensen and several others). This marble paper was distinguished by a calm beauty, beautiful colors and a fine fabric effect.

But it was a goal for us in Denmark to reach as far as the industry had come in England and in the USA, Germany and Switzerland, where the vast majority of books were sold in hardcover.

It was new that bookbinders, made of canvas and coating paper, had begun to fall in the audience’s tastes. But it was not so easy to manufacture these by mechanical means. The foreign full volumes were in this respect much easier to deal with, and they were also more solid, we refrained for a long time from producing fiction in full volumes.

However, there were a number of subject and handbooks and many school and textbooks where durability was at least as important. And in addition to canvas, there were excellent materials for such whole bindings, which were both durable and easy to decorate, such as Linson, which is a pure canvas imitation, and a material with the Danish word “Lanell”.

Of these materials, Lanell in particular was interesting because it paved the way for a whole new decoration of bookbinding. You could print everything possible on this material: patterns, photographs, drawings, etc. completely as one can on plain paper or cardboard.

Many associate Mr. Jørgen Jokum Smith with “Lanell”. Together with Otto B. Lindhardt and Ole Wivel, they formed from 1954 the triumvirate that both economically and literary rebuilt Denmark’s largest publisher: Gyldendal. Jokum Smith had as its main areas under him the publisher’s technical departments (book printing and bookbinding), the accounting department, the solid school and textbook department and a children’s book editorial office. To qoute Mr. Wivel: “Everything he touched gained renewed strength. He bought new machines, new fonts, created new, more appealing school-book equipment, and expanded as a children’s book publisher“.

In summary the old Danish word “Lanell” are associated with; solid, renewing strength, innovation, growth, durability, regenerative, powerful and with great coherence.

And those are exactly the same values ​​that this company is built on. Hence Lanell.