E-book Excerpt from ‘Jens Quistgaard: The Sculpting Designer’

Jens Quistgaard’s house and studio, Strandgaarden, Denmark, Could 2021
Photograph: Excerpted from JENS QUISTGAARD: THE SCULPTING DESIGNER© 2023 by Stig Guldberg. Reproduced by permission of Phaidon. All rights reserved.

If you happen to personal a chunk of tableware produced by Dansk, flip it over. There’s a excessive likelihood that, beneath the brand, there’s a small monogram studying “IHQ.” That’s designer Jens Harald Quistgaard — for many years, the most efficient (although not the solely) maker of Dansk’s accessible Scandinavian tableware and residential furnishings. Beginning with the “Fjord” cutlery sample in 1953, his work was a serious a part of bringing European-style modernism into upscale American properties, and it has by no means actually regarded dated or gone out of favor. (Food52, which purchased Dansk in 2021, can barely maintain its reissues in inventory.) Curiously, Quistgaard as a model of his personal has stayed a bit of beneath the radar through the years — you don’t usually hear his title talked about alongside Eero Saarinen’s or Grete Jalk’s — and Stig Guldberg’s new e book, Jens Quistgaard: The Sculpting Designer, goals to convey him out from beneath the company shadow.

Though Quistgaard designed largely tableware and comparable small objects, he did a few interiors — notably the shiplike house of Dansk’s founders in Armonk, New York, in addition to his personal home. On this excerpt from the brand new e book, Guldberg describes visiting the latter house for the primary time.

Jens Quistgaard holding his espresso pot for Hermann O. Jacobsen, 1947.
Photograph: Excerpted from JENS QUISTGAARD: THE SCULPTING DESIGNER© 2023 by Stig Guldberg. Reproduced by permission of Phaidon. All rights reserved.

At some point he phoned to ask me to dinner at his house. He wished me to satisfy his spouse, Lisbeth, and see a number of the issues he was engaged on; aside from that, we might simply “blather, brag, and drink crimson wine.” I clearly bear in mind the final a part of the drive by means of the south Zealand panorama, the hills and the winding roads, earlier than I — stuffed with anticipation — swung up the drive to Strandgaarden, an previous farmhouse that fashioned a quadrangle, which he had transformed and renovated himself a few years again. Wearing a white khaki go well with and sporting a wide-brimmed hat, Quistgaard stood within the portal to greet me with a giant smile. Together with his beard and lengthy cane, he may have stepped proper out of a portray by one of many Nineteenth-century Skagen painters.

It might be an unforgettable go to.

Photograph: Excerpted from JENS QUISTGAARD: THE SCULPTING DESIGNER© 2023 by Stig Guldberg. Reproduced by permission of Phaidon. All rights reserved.

Photograph: Excerpted from JENS QUISTGAARD: THE SCULPTING DESIGNER© 2023 by Stig Guldberg. Reproduced by permission of Phaidon. All rights reserved.

In an ebullient temper, Quistgaard confirmed me into the parlor, a tall-ceilinged room with a roaring fireplace within the giant open fire, the place we might have dinner. The room was embellished with vintage furnishings and work; heirlooms mixed and contrasted with designs and furnishings from Quistgaard’s personal hand. Searching trophies adorned the partitions, and, on open cabinets and in cabinets, vintage jars stood facet by facet with bronzes created by his father, the sculptor Harald Quistgaard (1887–1979). A big glass show case was stuffed with curiosities Quistgaard had picked up on his travels around the globe, testimony to his curiosity and cosmopolitan openness: Etruscan ceramics, Japanese teapots, vintage glasses, porcelain collectible figurines, and way more. A few of his personal favourite designs had been featured too: a stupendous teapot in sterling silver, rustic cast-iron candleholders, giant bowls and trays in unique wooden sorts, and a few his distinctive straightforward chairs in Brazilian rosewood with a chromed metal body.

The inside took me unexpectedly. It appeared grander and extra aristocratic than I had imagined, however the refined environment was counterpointed by Quistgaard himself, who crammed the room with unpretentious heat and laughter. It was apparent that this was an artist’s house, a heat and unassuming setting for all times. Living proof, to get to the superbly laid-out eating desk, one first needed to stride over the vacuum cleaner, which had been parked absent-mindedly in the midst of the room.

Photograph: Excerpted from JENS QUISTGAARD: THE SCULPTING DESIGNER© 2023 by Stig Guldberg. Reproduced by permission of Phaidon. All rights reserved.

Photograph: Excerpted from JENS QUISTGAARD: THE SCULPTING DESIGNER© 2023 by Stig Guldberg. Reproduced by permission of Phaidon. All rights reserved.

Whereas Quistgaard eagerly confirmed me round, regaling me with tales, I used to be struck by his charisma, his partaking heat, and his humor. His gaze, when he checked out me, was attentive and targeted. He advised me the tales of the various objects within the room with nice enthusiasm: “That is my recreation bag; I inherited it from my grandfather. The lion above the door is one which my dad made in plaster once I was a boy. And that piece within the cupboard over there, that’s a real Etruscan ceramic, an actual ardour of mine.” His household clearly performed a pivotal position in his life, with a grandfather who had been a landed proprietor and a father who was a sculptor. I used to be additionally struck by his virtually encyclopedic data. Not e book studying however insights clearly primarily based on firsthand observations and experiences.

Whether or not the dialog turned to Roman structure, botany, salmon fishing, Chinese language characters, or no matter, Quistgaard was seemingly on house floor and was in a position so as to add a firsthand expertise or a brand new perspective. It was all very attention-grabbing, after all, but additionally a bit one-sided because the night wore on. In some unspecified time in the future within the night, I believed I’d attempt to flip the tables and casually introduced up the nightingale, a subject the place I felt satisfied I may maintain my very own and thought I’d even the rating a bit of. As I’d quickly uncover, it was a idiot’s errand, for after all Quistgaard knew the nightingale just like the again of his hand and instantly started to exhibit the little fowl’s repertoire of warbles and growling. When the subject turned to the disproportionate relationship between the dimensions of the fowl and the quantity of its tune, which might attain virtually painful ranges, he mused, “Think about if it had been the dimensions of a cow — they might be capable to hear it in Rome!”

Photograph: Excerpted from JENS QUISTGAARD: THE SCULPTING DESIGNER© 2023 by Stig Guldberg. Reproduced by permission of Phaidon. All rights reserved.

Tailored from Jens Quistgaard: The Sculpting Designer, by Stig Guldberg. Phaidon, $89.95 US/$115.00 CAN, 2023.