Pull up a chair, courtesy of Vipp

It all goes back to the bin. Or at least that’s how Kasper Egelund sees it. The CEO of Vipp, the Danish design brand that broke out in 1939 with its elegant pedal trash bin (one currently lives in the collection at New York’s MoMA), describes the company as the perfect marriage of practicality and aesthetics. “It’s long-lasting products in good materials, something beautiful to look at, functional and honest,” he says, matter-of-factly. Egelund’s relationship to Vipp’s products runs deep; that bin just so happens to have been designed by his grandfather, Holger Nielsen. That stated ethos extends to the entire Vipp universe, including its covetable swivel chair, a model from the brand’s celebrated 451 chair series. Crafted in slick powder-coated aluminium and upholstered with a buttery Italian leather seat and backrest, the chair is elegant in its simplicity and impossibly comfortable. Its 360 degree swivel is both practical and pleasing. “The body likes movement,” says Egelund.

The first 451 chair was designed for the Vipp Shelter, a sleek rectangular cabin in the middle of the woods in southern Sweden. Featuring floor-to-ceiling windows and crafted mostly from recyclable steel, the cabin was the first of several Vipp guest-houses that allow design fans to spend an evening or two in extraordinary environs.

Related: Step inside Vipp’s historic Lagrasse guesthouse, captured by Danish content creator Ella Karberg

When the Shelter was built in 2014, Vipp was ostensibly a kitchen and home accessories brand. “The need for creating more furniture became apparent with the birth of the Shelter,” says Egelund. “We didn’t want to make a Vipp Shelter and then place competitors’ furniture inside of it.” Funnily enough, the chairs didn’t arrive in time for the grand opening, but just over a decade later they remain a beloved piece in the brand’s growing product offering.

Egelund, meanwhile, didn’t set out to enter the family business. “I came here by coincidence,” he says. His father had left his mother, a social worker who was struggling to run the humble Vipp workshop in a suburb in western Denmark. Feeling “sad” for his mum, Egelund helped out with Vipp on the side of studying at the Copenhagen Business School. “I didn’t have a grand plan,” he says. Two decades later, under the guidance of Egelund, Vipp is much more than an iconic bin, it’s a bona fide design destination; the sort of brand that can pleasingly outfit most of the home, down to its desk chair. Egelund lives with nine of the chairs in his private Copenhagen home; eight around the dining room table and the last at the desk in his office. As he notes with a smile, “It’s great to look at.”