| Company type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1954  |
| Founders | |
| Headquarters | , United States |
| Parent | Food52 |
Dansk Designs (also known as Dansk International Designs starting in 1954) is an American distributor and retailer of cookware, tableware, and other home accessories based in Mount Kisco, New York.
On a trip to Europe in 1954, Americans Martha and Ted Nierenberg went in search of a product to manufacture and produce for a U.S. audience. During a visit to the Museum of Arts and Crafts Kunstindustrimuseet (today the Danish Museum of Art & Design Designmuseum Danmark) in Copenhagen, they saw a unique set of cutlery on display that combined teak and stainless steel, created by artist-designer Jens Quistgaard. [2] The Nierenbergs tracked down Quistgaard and spoke with him in an effort to convince him to manufacture the cutlery. At first, Quistgaard insisted that the pieces could only be forged by hand, one piece at a time, but Nierenberg was able to convince him they could be mass-produced, leading to Dansk Designs' first product, Fjord flatware, which has been one of the brand's enduring bestsellers. [3]
The Nierenbergs established Dansk that year in the garage of their Great Neck, New York, home, with Quistgaard as its founding designer. [3] The name is the Danish word for Danish. By the end of 1954, Ted Nierenberg attracted orders for several hundred units from stores all around the United States, and the business took off from there. [4] By 1958, Nierenberg and Quistgaard had expanded Dansk's wares to include teak magazine racks and stools, stoneware casseroles, salt and pepper grinders, and flatware with split cane handles. The New York Times credited Dansk with "creating a stir" with "some of the most popular accessories found in American homes." [4] As the company name suggested, Dansk came to epitomize Danish modern design in the urban American market. [5] [6] By 1982, Quistgaard had created more than 2,000 different designs for Dansk of dinnerware, glassware and items for the home. [7]
Dansk relocated its headquarters to Mount Kisco, New York, in the 1960s. [3]
Dansk was purchased in June 1985 by Dansk Acquisition Corp. in a deal initiated by Goldman Sachs. [8] Dansk was acquired in 1991 by the Brown-Forman Corporation and incorporated under its Lenox subsidiary. [9] On March 16, 2009, a group of investors led by Clarion Capital Partners LLC purchased the assets of Lenox—including Dansk—and renamed the company Lenox Corporation. [10] As of January 2018, Dansk continued as a brand of Lenox [11] with headquarters located in Bristol, Pennsylvania.
In May 2021, Food52, the content-to-commerce platform founded by Amanda Hesser, purchased Dansk from Center Lane Partners with plans to revive the brand. [1]
Dansk designs are recognised for their artistic merit and several examples are held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. [12]
Alessi is a housewares and kitchen utensil company in Italy, manufacturing and marketing everyday items authored by a wide range of designers, architects, and industrial designers — including Achille Castiglioni, Richard Sapper, Marco Zanuso, Alessandro Mendini, Ettore Sottsass, Wiel Arets, Zaha Hadid, Toyo Ito, Hani Rashid, Tom Kovac, Greg Lynn, MVRDV, Jean Nouvel, UN Studio, Michael Graves, and Philippe Starck. The Alessi company in the UK is worth around £2.4 million.
Lenox Corporation is an American manufacturing company that sells tableware, giftware, and collectible products under the Lenox, Dansk, Reed & Barton, Gorham, and Oneida brands. For most of the 20th century, it was the most prestigious American maker of tableware, and the company produced other decorative pieces as well. Several Lenox china services were commissioned for the White House. By 2020, it was the last significant manufacturer of bone china in the United States, until the COVID-19 pandemic forced the closure of the company's only remaining American factory.
Oneida Limited is an American manufacturer and seller of tableware and cutlery. Oneida is one of the world's largest designers and sellers of stainless steel and silverplated cutlery and tableware for the consumer and foodservice industries. It is also the largest supplier of dinnerware to the foodservice industry in North America. The company operates in the United States, Canada, Latin America, Europe, and Asia, marketing and distributing tabletop products, which include flatware, dinnerware, crystal stemware, glassware and kitchen tools and gadgets. The factory in upstate NY was sold to Liberty Tabletop, who is the sole manufacturer of US made flatware. The company originated in the late-nineteenth century in the Oneida Community in Oneida, New York.
Robert Radford Welch MBE, RDI, was an English designer and silversmith.
Reed & Barton was a prominent American silversmith manufacturer based in the city of Taunton, Massachusetts, operating between 1824 and 2015. Its products include sterling silver and silverplate flatware. The company produced many varieties of britannia and silver products since Henry G. Reed and Charles E. Barton took over the failing works of Isaac Babbitt in Taunton. During the American Civil War, Reed & Barton produced a considerable quantity of weapons for Union Army soldiers and officers.
The Gorham Manufacturing Company was one of the largest American manufacturers of sterling and silverplate and a foundry for bronze sculpture.
Royal Doulton is an English ceramic and home accessories manufacturer that was founded in 1815. Operating originally in Vauxhall, London, and later moving to Lambeth, in 1882 it opened a factory in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, in the centre of English pottery. From the start, the backbone of the business was a wide range of utilitarian wares, mostly stonewares, including storage jars, tankards and the like, and later extending to drain pipes, lavatories, water filters, electrical porcelain and other technical ceramics. From 1853 to 1901, its wares were marked Doulton & Co., then from 1901, when a royal warrant was given, Royal Doulton.
Russel Wright was an American industrial designer. His best-selling ceramic dinnerware was credited with encouraging the general public to enjoy creative modern design at table with his many other ranges of furniture, accessories, and textiles. The Russel and Mary Wright Design Gallery at Manitoga in upstate New York records how the "Wrights shaped modern American lifestyle".
Lagostina is an Italian manufacturer of cookware, cutlery and other kitchenware. They are also an important manufacturer of pressure cookers. Lagostina was founded in 1901 in Omegna, Province of Verbania, Italy, as a family business initially focusing on stainless steel flatware.
Skagen Denmark is an American brand, initially of watches, of Skagen Designs Ltd., that has grown into being a wider American contemporary accessories brand based on Danish design. As of spring 2015, its product lines include watches, handbags, jewelry, and other durable personal goods, the majority of which aimed at the mid-range. Named for Skagen, a Jutland peninsula and Denmark's northernmost town, Skagen Designs Ltd. was purchased in 2012 by Fossil, for stock and cash in transaction totaling approximately US$237 million, and it continues to operate as a wholly owned subsidiary under its parent, continuing the traditional brand name Skagen Denmark. Starting in New York, then in Lake Tahoe and Reno, Nevada, Skagen Designs Ltd. operations are overseen from Richardson, Texas, near Dallas, in the United States.
Danish design is a style of functionalistic design and architecture that was developed in mid-20th century. Influenced by the German Bauhaus school, many Danish designers used the new industrial technologies, combined with ideas of simplicity and functionalism to design buildings, furniture and household objects, many of which have become iconic and are still in use and production. Prominent examples are the Egg chair, the PH lamps and the Sydney Opera House (Australia).
Danish modern is a style of minimalist furniture and housewares from Denmark associated with the Danish design movement. In the 1920s, Kaare Klint embraced the principles of Bauhaus modernism in furniture design, creating clean, pure lines based on an understanding of classical furniture craftsmanship coupled with careful research into materials, proportions, and the requirements of the human body.
Theodore David "Ted" Nierenberg was an American business executive and entrepreneur who created Dansk International Designs, a company that sells Scandinavian Design-style cooking and serving utensils and other home furnishings, established after discovering the simple but elegant design style on a 1950s trip to Denmark.
Jens Harald Quistgaard was a Danish sculptor and designer, known principally for his work for the American company Dansk Designs, where he was chief designer from 1954 and for the following three decades.
Ib Georg Jensen was a Danish ceramist, designer and author by the alias 'Muk'.
Donald A. Wallance (1909–1990) was an American metalworker, furniture and industrial designer. His book, Shaping America's Products, is described as a "seminal study of the relationship of craftsmanship to industry," by the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.
R. Wallace & Sons was formed in Wallingford, Connecticut, and incorporated in 1879. As of 1893, this company manufactured silver and plated ware and cutlery and had about 600 employees.
Harald Nielsen was a Danish designer of silver for Georg Jensen. The younger brother of Georg Jensen's third wife, he joined the company at 17 as a chaser's apprentice but later became one of the company's leading designers in the 1920s and 1930s and Jensen's closest colleague. One of his most well-known designs being the pyramid flatware pattern. In the early 1950s he headed the company's apprentice school and in 1958 became its artistic director.
Martha Nierenberg, was a Hungarian-born American businesswoman who co-founded Dansk International Designs.
Food52 is a recipe and cookware website. Founded in 2009 by Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs, formerly of the New York Times, its website is intended as a platform for users to publish recipes and discuss cooking. The company also produces its own books.
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