Hello -Found this massive tray I believe to be early Dansk, but can not find anything like it in any old catalog. The piece is marked Staved Teak Danmark IHQ with a graphic in the middle. I have attached two pictures, one with the mark on the bottom and a bad picture of the front. Any insight would be greatly appreciated! Thanks,
spanky,
Dansk is an American company, started by an American with the intent of importing Danish designs by Quistgaard. I believe almost all (if not all) pieces were intended for export. I have never heard the reason behind the earliest Dansk logo having the "Danmark" spelling vs the change to "Denmark".
cdsilva, you could be quite right about that. I have wondered about it ever since I first visited Denmark in the early 90s and saw a lot of stuff marked "made in Danmark". I do see that in the US but rarely and I just kind of always thought that pieces marked that way were bought in Denmark by individuals and brought to the US.
I remember seeing tons of staved teak and lots of those wonderful teak grid trivets and trays in Illums Bolighus back then. I don't know who made them but they were not something easily found in the US, I know. (Oh for a time machine)
Well, I'm not sure what else there is to confirm. It is an early Dansk staved teak tray, designed by Jens Quistgaard. There is an informative pre-1964 Dansk catalog available on the tpederzani web site. However, that only captures a moment in Dansk's extensive changing collections. I would guess that your tray's production was either 1) done and discontinued before this catalog was published, or 2) done after the catalog was published and before they changed logos on their staved teak line.
Unless more catalogs surface, there's no other way that I know of to get any more info.
Last week I came across the first Quistgaard signed Dansk item that I wish I had not found. Made in China of some kind of cheap light-colored wood, with a thick coating of dark brown varnish. Each pass of a knife on this bread board had splintered off the finish in flakes. The laminated wood chunks also had many open glue joints, even though the piece showed no particular signs of water exposure.
I saw a few online reviews for Dansk wood items sold recently at Macys, etc, and there were numerous complaints about the problem with the superficial finish coming off after the first use.
I had not paid much attention to what Dansk/Lenox has been currently producing, and had not realized it was quite as bad as this.
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