Thursday, January 29, 2009

Hot Fjord

The designs of Jens Quistgaard, the Danish industrial designer who died nearly a year ago at the age of 88, are hot. Dansk, which introduced Quistgaard to the United States has reissued the very flatware that launched in the company in 1954. According to the New York Times obituary, "Dansk was founded in 1954 by Ted Nierenberg, an American entrepreneur and engineer. ... Mr. Nierenberg was visiting Copenhagen, where he caught sight of hand-forged flatware by Mr. Quistgaard in a museum. It was made of stainless steel with teak handles, an unusual marriage of materials at the time. He sought out Mr. Quistgaard, persuaded him that his singular creations could be properly mass-produced, and Dansk was born."

You can buy the reissued Classic Fjord Flatware for $59.95 for a five-piece set at the Dansk website. Dansk also has reissued Quistgaard's 1955 Kongo flatware set of black enamel and stainless steel. Modernism also reports that Dansk will soon be selling Quistgaard's No. 810/811 teak ice bucket. The reissue will be made from acacia, a fast-growing wood.

Check out Teak Pepper, a blog focused on collecting Quistgaard and Dansk by Mark Perlson, the author of Danish Pepper, a book on Quistgaard's teak pepper mills.

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