The book features a few more Dansk pieces inside and has a ton of information on how to make just about anything on a lathe. There’s a few dozen projects as well – none as cool as a Dansk pepper mill, but good stuff.  There’s a lot of photos of wood and metal turned pieces inside as well, including works by Bojessen, Krenit, JHQ, and several others. The 2nd photo is a diagram I thought was very cool, showing the profile of many bowl and tray design projects.

The original used teak or rosewood and had multiple different leather options.  The modern reissue uses black stained oak and black leather. This is a unique chair design because it easily assembles and disassembles without screws or other fittings – the wood poles just fit into the metal frame along with the seat.

The original is very comfortable and has gone up dramatically in value. I have no idea what the new ones will cost, but this might be a good option for a modern collector. Keep in mind, though, nothing is cheap in Denmark and I don’t know if they are importing them to the states.

You can read more about it on the Gubi website.

Gubi has also released an online magazine that has an article about Jens Quistgaard, including a cool “Eight things you need to know about Jens Quistgaard”.  You can get it here, or on the Danish Pepper Facebook page

Jens Quistgaard Stokke Chair by Gubi

The place is incredible. Almost every interior and exterior element was designed by JHQ himself.  The woodwork is amazing, as is the brickwork. It has modern walls of glass and – in line with the rest of JHQ’s work – an almost medieval feel to the kitchen and imposing hearth. I posted some photos from the listing below – the teak in the bathroom and the ceiling beams are just amazing.

This is a one-of-a-kind monument – even just seeing photos is amazing. Can you imagine just buying this place? I know Quistgaard did some other architectural work, but nothing like this. How cool would my pepper mill collection would look in there? All I need to do is move across the country and come up with a cool $7,000,000 (which appears to be a bargain in that neighborhood, believe it or not).

I can only hope that whoever buys it appreciates the work that went into it and doesn’t attempt to renovate with a heavy hand.

You can see the listing through Sotheby’s Realty here.

It’s really exciting to see a major spread in a national magazine about Jens Quistgaard. The article features stories about the founding of Dansk and other aspects of JHQ’s life. There’s some great archival photography that accompanies the article and a sidebar for collectors as well. A must read for any fan of Dansk Designs or JHQ.

You can find out more information on the article on their site.

Modernism has also posted additional photos and an excerpt from Stig’s film on their blog.

For more information on the Jens Quistgaard documentary DVD, visit Amazon.

If you’ve seen the “Saucepan” documentary on Jens Quistgaard, you saw Benny’s antique store. After seeing the rooms full of JHQ’s designs, I had to visit it, so Henriette was nice enough to drive us to Praesto where the shop is. So, after saying farewell to Strandgaarden we took a short beautiful drive through the Danish countryside. We ended up in Praesto, a beautiful little town on a Danish fjord by the sea. It was so quaint and typically Danish, it felt like we were in a storybook.  

Here’s the outside of the shop.  It is in an old house from the late 1800s and it is an amazing place. Chock full of traditional Danish antiques (like Royal Copenhagen china and the like) plus a whole different area for mid-century Danish design, with a focus on Quistgaard.

Here’s a photo of Benny and some of his wares. Benny was quite an interesting guy. He was the nicest guy you’ll ever meet. He was trained as a master cabinet maker as a young man, and eventually became a representative for Dansk, traveling all over Europe promoting JHQ’s wares. He became friends with JHQ, and has a ton of information on him and his work. He lives in a beautiful home behind the shop which he himself lovingly restored.

A view from the “Quistgaard” room into the rest of his modern wares. There was a ton of work by just about every Danish designer you could think of.

A lot of nice pieces, including pepper mills and flatware are found in the window. The Dansk pieces – because they were primarily sold in the US – are pretty rare in Denmark and are thus pretty expensive. Stuff that was commonly sold in Denmark is more reasonably priced, about what you’d find on eBay although there are some good deals to be had – I’ll post about my finds later.

Here are some of the enamel – both Kobenstyle and Ankerline – pieces at Benny’s shop.

After having a nice cup of tea with Benny, we said goodbye to Henriette at the train station and headed back to Copenhagen to with Stig to continue the rest of the journey.  What a great visit!

You can find out more about Benny’s shop at the official Praesto Antik website.

Here’s the new Dansk reissue:

And here’s the original from my collection:

It was a little rainy and chilly that day, and we caught a train down South. Here I am on the train, dealing with jet lag and excited for the time ahead. The house is near the town of Vordingborg, where we were met by Henriette and Stig. It was great meeting her for the first time and instantly they made us feel at home.  We were whisked off in the car for a beautiful drive to the seaside.  The countryside was beautiful. It reminded me a bit of Wisconsin’s rolling hills. Except, the homes were all hundreds of years old and we were driving along Danish fjords.

We pulled up to Strandgaarden and I immediately noticed the sign was in the Dansk typeface JHQ created.  It was so exciting to be there. I could feel the salt in the air and I felt like I was in a truly historic place.

Look at that collectors – you are excited to get a bowl signed IHQ – how about a whole house?  His family has owned homes in the area for years and years – he lived just down the hill as a child.  This house, which is really 4 buildings grouped in a square with a courtyard in the middle, was an old farmhouse that was totally rebuilt by Quistgaard.  The history of where JHQ lived, including a stint in Rome, is long and hard to remember, but this was his true home. He loved it here, by the sea. When he wasn’t in Copenhagen, he worked here, and this is where his stuff is. It was really exciting to see his handiwork in every bit of the house, from the shutters to the door handles. Even the beds in the guest bedroom were designed by him.

From the courtyard, you enter the house into a small entry hall.  In front of you is the kitchen, and to the right is the living room (pictured above). What a house of treasures this is! Filled with his own works, antiques of all ages, mounted deer skulls, his father’s art, and anything else you can imagine. There’s a small sitting area where you can lounge on his “conical stick” line, a dining table, a small desk, and numerous other areas to relax and talk and absorb. The whole place is a shrine to JHQ, but it is also Henriette’s home and it really felt alive and welcoming.

A still life of small treasures was found on each of the window sills. Pictured here is an old Dansk display sign, a prototype of one of his later chairs, a pottery ashtray, an old axe handle, and a sculpture (I think it was his father’s) work.  Other sills held one of a kind pieces (including a super-elaborate clock) and other ephemera.

We opened up a large cabinet which held a world of amazing things.  Pottery he made as a child, antique tools, collections, and one-off JQH pieces.  It was almost too overwhelming. I was there for two days and I only absorbed a fraction of what there was to see.

Hey – look at that cool book about pepper mills!  I was happy to see my book prominently displayed amongst other published accounts of JHQ’s work.  Notice the stack of large bowls, including the very rare and valuable wenge rare woods bowl. There were many pieces in the home, but they reserved the rare pieces for display in the great room. As a collector it is great to see many familiar pieces amongst the very rare and one-off pieces that were part of JHQ’s everyday life.

I was very jet lagged and hungry, so the amazing lunch Henriette prepared for us was most welcome.  This was just part of the spread – which also included pickled herring and other Danish delights.  The bread was amazing, the beer was cold, and the company was great – just sitting around hearing stories of JHQ’s life and talking about life and design.  For you collectors who might be curious, we ate off of Brown Mist dishes, Anvil flatware, with some staved teak and Variations thrown in there. The glasses were Simplicity by JHQ, but these were his own which were customized with little decorative clear glass blobs and hand signed on the bottom by him.

After lunch we spent a little time going through the other cabinet filled with JHQ originals. This is Henriette telling us the story on a hand painted mug.  I don’t remember the whole story, but there is a large and very mean looking fish about to eat something quite small and innocent. Must of JHQ’s original art had whimsical stories behind them – he really must have been quite a guy with a huge personality. Of course, it was nerve-racking but very exciting to have all of these fragile, priceless, one of a kind pieces around me.

I’ll end this part of the story with an overall impression from the main home. It really felt like it was a world created by a unique individual, anchored in every aspect of Danish culture and his own family’s history. It was filled with antiques – all pieces JHQ found interesting for one reason or another. It might have been the craftsmanship, the artistry, the story, or just the memory, but it all reflected back on him as a person. Although he was a modern designer in every sense of the word, his home is no glass-walled testament to modernistic ideals. It is a testament to him as a person, which explicitly demonstrates the underlying ideas behind his work. In my book I talk about how his work would often feel just as at home in a medieval castle as in a mid-century Eames era home, and his house explains the historic underpinnings that make this duality possible. I’m personally more interested in the Eames era part of that equation, but experiencing these pieces in this deeply personal setting really brings out the timeless nature of what he was able to accomplish.