A little over a year ago, on Jan 4, 2008, Jens Quistgaard died at 88.<\/p>\n
I found out a few weeks later while finalizing the research for my book, Danish Pepper.\u00a0 I was scouring Danish design sites late at night using a free online translator to see if there were any additional biographical facts I could use in the book.\u00a0 I found a Danish bio of JHQ , and when I put the last sentence in the translator it spit out: Quistgaard died January 2008.\u00a0 I did a double take – wait – it’s Jan 2008 right now and this is the first I’ve heard of it.\u00a0 A little (well, a lot) of web searching later and I found a Danish newspaper’s online obituary confirming this translation to be correct.<\/p>\n
I was about a month away from finishing a book about this man.\u00a0 I had spent the last two years working on it, thinking about how to tell the story of his life through his pepper mill designs. Understandably, much was racing through my mind.\u00a0 He never saw my book.\u00a0 I didn’t get to ask him any questions.\u00a0 This is so sad.\u00a0 What a great life he had.\u00a0 How come this isn’t getting more news coverage?\u00a0 Why am I finding this only in Danish?\u00a0 Why does the obituary only have a photo of a can opener he designed in the 50s?\u00a0 What does this mean for my book?<\/p>\n
Although I was feeling sadness, it was tempered by a feeling that he had led such a long and productive life.\u00a0 I chose to focus on celebrating his life by finishing the book and getting it out there for the world to see.<\/p>\n
A year later, I still get asked if I got to meet Jens Quistgaard, and sadly, I have to say “no”.\u00a0 However, through the book, I have had some correspondence with his family.\u00a0 Seeing him as a family man and knowing how his family misses him as part of their lives, rather than as a great designer, keeps in focus the humanity of the situation.<\/p>\n
I still miss him and wish I had the chance to meet him, but I feel like I got to know him through his design and the experience I had writing the book.\u00a0 And I feel like a better person because of it.\u00a0 Thanks, Jens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A little over a year ago, on Jan 4, 2008, Jens Quistgaard died at 88. I found out a few weeks later while finalizing the research for my book, Danish Pepper.\u00a0 I was scouring Danish design sites late at night using a free online translator to see if there were any additional biographical facts I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-danskquistgaard","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teakpepper.com\/teakpepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teakpepper.com\/teakpepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teakpepper.com\/teakpepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teakpepper.com\/teakpepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teakpepper.com\/teakpepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.teakpepper.com\/teakpepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teakpepper.com\/teakpepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teakpepper.com\/teakpepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teakpepper.com\/teakpepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}