There were a few auctions at the major auction houses with Quistgaard pieces last month.
At the September Modern auction at Rago Arts, a pair of cast iron candlesticks sold for $793, well above the $400 – $600 estimate. This is a very tall piece, almost 18″, and one of the rarer pieces in Jens Quistgaard’s Designs With Light collection from Dansk.
On Oct 6, Wright had a Modern Design auction with a lot of Jens Quistgaard pepper mills for Dansk. The collection included 22 mills, but 5 of them are not Dansk and there’s at least 3 pairs of duplicate designs. The collection sold for $2,750 (or $125 per piece) which is a pretty good price considering none of the mills are particularly rare. There are a few strange things about this listing, though. First of all, the photo is nice but you can’t really see all the mills – four of them are almost totally obscured. Second, the description makes it sound like they are all signed Dansk, which I am sure they are not. It looks to me like a store is getting rid of their extra stock – and they did pretty good.
Also at the Wright auction was an amazing set of 46 Krenit enamel bowls, designed by Herbert Krenchel. I love these super thin metal bowls and have quite a few in my collection. This collection is huge, and includes a great variety of sizes and colors. All it’s missing is the plastic salad tongs. It sold for $3,825 – about $80 per bowl on average. What a great photo, too!
It’s great that these auction houses post their results on their sites along with the fine photos they take. What an amazing resource for collectors and students of design.
