Designer Spotlight: Jens H. Quistgaard
Jens H. Quistgaard has the distinction of being the principal founding designer for Dansk. In 1954 his handcrafted,
teak-handled Fjord flatware was seen on exhibition in the Danish Kundstanvaerk Museum. Fjord became the very first Dansk product,
and its success led to the development of many more of Quistgaard's incredible designs in metal, wood, ceramic, and glass.
The reintroduction of
Kongo is based on an early variation of that very first flatware design.
Quistgaard's ageless designs also earned him several gold medals at the prestigious Triennale Exhibition in Milan.
Many of Quistgaard's original pieces are on exhibition in museums in Italy, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, as well as at the Louvre, MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and the Smithsonian Institute.
An extraordinary craftsman, Quistgaard has worked in silver, tin, stainless steel, enamelware, copper, glass, porcelain, china, and wood.
Other classic Dansk designs by Quistgaard are
Karin,
Odin,
Variation V,
Kobenhavn, and
Parallel Diamond.
›All Jens H. Quistgaard works
The Story of Dansk
By melding the design beauty of simple forms with
straightforward functionality, Dansk elevates flatware and ceramics to modern
art. The company was born in the 1950s after an eye-opening trip to Denmark by
New York entrepreneurs Ted and Martha Nierenberg. Impressed by a display of
elegant yet unpretentious flatware in a Copenhagen museum, the couple began
working with a Danish designer to bring tableware with that same modernist
Scandinavian sensibility to the American market. More recently, Dansk has
teemed with renowned architect Michael Graves to produce an array of innovative
and easy-care kitchen and home products. Today many Dansk designs can be found
in the permanent collections of such museums as the Louvre and New York's
Museum of Modern Art.
