Posted by Vividify Editorial
on September 25, 2026
Kay-Bojesen-Figurines-Menig-med-gevaer-RoedBlaaHvid-lille-39025.png
Kay Bojesen's Royal Guard is one of the few Danish toys that adults buy for themselves. This piece looks at what the guardsmen and their sentry box actually are: how the figures are built from turned beech, how the painted uniforms work, and how the family scales from an 18.5 cm mini to a standard-bearer taller than a young child.
A guard born in 1942
Kay Bojesen (1886–1958) trained as a silversmith, worked for Georg Jensen and spent most of his career making cutlery and hollowware before turning to wood. His wooden animals and figures came out of the same conviction that shaped his silver: an object should be friendly to the hand and honest about its material. The Royal Guard series dates from 1942, when Denmark was under German occupation, and the choice of subject was not neutral. The Royal Life Guards, who stand watch at Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen, were a daily symbol of the monarchy, and a small wooden version of them carried a quiet national pride into homes and nurseries.
Bojesen was also a practical toymaker. The figures were meant to be picked up, moved around a floor and knocked over, and the current versions from Rosendahl Design Group keep that intention. The product care advice is short and sensible: keep them out of direct sunlight and wipe them with a dry, soft cloth.
Turned bodies, painted uniforms
Look closely at any of the guardsmen and you can read how they are made. The rounded parts are turned on a lathe: the tall bearskin cap, the head beneath it and the slim neck that joins them to the body. The torso, arms and legs are flat, squared blocks of beech, cut cleanly and joined so the arms hang slightly away from the chest. Nothing is carved into a realistic shape. The character comes almost entirely from paint, applied in flat fields of colour with crisp edges where one area meets the next.
That division of labour is the point of the design. The turned cap and head give each figure a soft, recognisable silhouette that reads from across a room; the paint supplies the detail you notice up close: the glossy black bearskin, the red tunic, the blue trousers with a thin white stripe, the white gloves and black boots. The face is left as bare wood with two small dots for eyes. With no painted mouth, the expression stays open and a little playful rather than stern, which is the twinkle the Rosendahl description refers to.
Beech is a good choice for this. It is a close-grained, pale hardwood that turns cleanly and takes paint evenly, so the colour sits smooth rather than soaking into open pores. It is also hard enough to shrug off the knocks of play better than a softer timber would.
The small figures: gun, sword and flag
The small size is where most collections begin. The Guardsman with gun small red/blue/white and the Guardsman with sword small red/blue/white share exactly the same body: 22.5 cm high, 7 cm wide and 5 cm deep, at 0.16 kg each. The difference is in the hand. The gun figure is the private at his post, a rifle in unpainted beech held upright at his side, with white belts crossed over the chest. The sword figure is the officer: no crossbelts, a row of buttons down the tunic and a small silver sabre in the hand. In Danish the two are known by those ranks. Stood side by side they form the smallest possible parade.
The Standard-bearer small red/blue/white is the one that changes the proportions of a group. The figure carries a fabric Danish flag, its white cross embroidered, on a slim wooden pole, which lifts the overall height to 29.5 cm and pushes the depth out to 10.5 cm, with a width of 7 cm and a weight of 0.165 kg. On a shelf it gives a row of guardsmen a clear leader and a vertical accent of red and white above the bearskins.
A Drummer is also part of the small series, at 22.5 x 7 x 8.5 cm: the same height as the guardsmen, deeper because of the drum held in front of the body. With gun, sword, flag and drum, the small figures make a complete little band.
The sentry box
A guardsman needs somewhere to stand. The Sentry box H36 cm red/white is a wooden version of the sentry boxes at Amalienborg: a tall, many-sided red column with an arched opening, a pointed roof topped by a white finial, white trim at base and eaves, and a crowned royal monogram in gold on the roof. It is 36 cm high, so a small guardsman stands inside with room above his cap. A second version, the Sentry-box King Frederik X, carries the monogram of the Danish king who came to the throne in January 2024; it is also 36 cm high, 10 cm deep and weighs 0.35 kg.
The box changes how the figures are displayed. On its own a 22.5 cm guardsman is an ornament; placed in the doorway of his box he becomes a small scene, and the pair reads clearly on a deep windowsill, a hall console or the top of a bookcase. It is also a sensible starting point for a gift that can grow, since the box invites a second guard, then a standard-bearer.
From mini to 154 cm: the scale jump
The Standard-bearer is the figure that shows how far the Royal Guard can be scaled. The same design exists in four sizes, and the steps are not gentle:
| Standard-bearer size | Height | Weight | Where it works |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mini | 18.5 cm | Not stated | A desk, a narrow ledge, a first gift |
| Small | 29.5 cm | 0.165 kg | Shelves and windowsills, with the small guardsmen |
| Medium | 77 cm | 1.4 kg | The floor beside a sideboard or in a child's room |
| Large | 154 cm | 10.5 kg | A hallway or entrance, as a figure in its own right |
The jump from small to medium more than doubles the height, and medium to large doubles it again. At 154 cm the large Standard-bearer stands at roughly adult shoulder height and weighs 10.5 kg, so it stops being something you pick up and becomes something you place, like a piece of furniture. The turned construction is what makes this work: the same cylinders, spheres and flat painted fields that look neat at 29.5 cm read as bold, almost architectural shapes at full size. Few toy designs survive that kind of enlargement without looking inflated.
Living with a wooden guard
Treat the figures as painted wood rather than as fragile porcelain. They are meant to be handled, and small knocks are part of their life in a family home. The two practical enemies are sun and water: direct sunlight fades painted colour over time, and the figures are not dishwasher safe, so a dry, soft cloth is all the cleaning they need. Keep the larger sizes away from radiators, as with any solid timber.
For placement, think in groups and in heights. A pair of small guardsmen either side of a sentry box makes a symmetrical composition that suits a mantelpiece. A single standard-bearer does more on its own than a crowded row. If you want one piece with real presence, the medium or large Standard-bearer belongs on the floor, not on a shelf. Collectors of Bojesen's animals will find the guards sit naturally beside them; the story of that wider toy tradition is told in our piece on the Kay Bojesen Monkey.
To see the rest of the guard alongside the animals and birds, browse the Wooden Figures collection.