Jens Quistgaard

Danish industrial designer Jens Quistgaard's clean-lined and immensely popular pieces for the Dansk brand of tableware, helped define the Scandinavian Modern style. As a child, Jens Quistgaard cheerfully made his own toys from the scraps of wood his father (Harald Q. - a well-known sculptor) brought home. As a young man, Mr. Quistgaard served an apprenticeship at Georg Jensen, the well-known Danish silversmiths. During World War II, he was a member of the Danish underground. Quistgaard is known for his fluid lines and for using unusual materials, often in combination. His signature pieces included salad bowls and cutting boards of teak and other exotic woods, and elegant stainless-steel flatware that was an affordable alternative to sterling silver. He was one of the first designers to rehabilitate enameled steel as a medium for cookware. For years enameled steel pots were considered lowbrow flimsy speckled things that were at home over a campfire but not in a bourgeois kitchen. His work, which won many international awards, is in the permanent collections of major museums, among them the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art and the Louvre.