Hope I'm not taking up to much of your (now) scarce spare time.
Few years back, when I studied in Gent, I bought a set of cutlery in a secondhand-shop. I really liked it, especially because it felt nice and heavy in my hands.
Now that we are settling in, I've picked it up again.
It is signed Mepal, consists of thick flat metal parts, combined with white melamine grips, glued to each side.
The design is very stylized, rather geometric and I would guess dating to early seventies.
As you designed yourself for Mepal I wondered if you could shed some light on these.
(In my dreams I see you, coming of some cloud, flying to me with an untouched box of seventies cutlery, straight from the Mepal-factory)
I will try to take some pics to.
Many regards, groeten en heel veel succes met de heropbouw.
Brecht-Jan
Beste Brecht-Jan
Sorry voor het late antwoord, maar ik kwam gewoon niet verder dan de laatste bijdragen en toen die ook nog een beetje uitdagend werden was het hek helemaal van de dam.
When I started at Mepal, on the 24th of April 1971, there certainly was no cutlery in the collection. Nico Nijland was in charge of the design department and although I vaguely remember that it came up from time to time, it never went further than dreaming about it. The reason for the dreaming was that in spite of a second to none reputation of quality our melamine dishes would end up scratched under low quality serrated knives. It would be too long to describe the difference between a properly serrated knife and a badly made one, but in any case we often discussed the possibility to make good ones and recommend them in combination with our melamine dishes. It might not be very common for North American DA-ers but melamine dishes were often used on a daily basis, not just as camping gear (hence the over 300.000 dishes a year we would sell in Holland alone with at the time 15 million inhabitants). When a year later a was in charge of the design department, the same topic was regularly discussed with sales and marketing but never put on the list of projects. The same repeated itself when AP Moller bought the company and combined it with the Danish Rosti. We discussed the possibility a number of times in Denmark, did some preliminary sketches but never produced any of it. The main reason was of course that by that time even good quality Japanese cutlery was too expensive compared to lower quality Korean cutlery that gained large market share.
When I left august 1979, we still had no cutlery,?so your cutlery is certainly came later, probably not before the early eighties because I continued to design for Rosti for a while (the tip ?n mix bowls, spaghetti spoon etc.) You mention the possibility of showing pictures. I really would appreciate because right now I am as much in the dark as you are (in spite of having electricity back since a week)
Bedankt voor de goeie wensen en groetjes aan de Artevelde-stad!
photo
Koen,
Bedankt voor je informatieve reply!
Thanks for the informative reply!
Again, my apologies when taking up to much of your time.
Included is a photo of the set. I really thought this would date to pre-eighties, but I must be wrong..
Do take your time, it's not like we're gonna stop eating until we receive word from you (smile).
Regards
BJ
I am sorry...
BJ but at do recognize the kind of cutlery that came out of South Korea in the early 80ties,often sold with some kind of table stand. I can not imagine that Mepal had it in their assortment as an independent product, and I am sure they never produced them. An older catalogue of 1982 does not show it either so I presume that it was part of a pick-nick set. I do not know when they were introduced but I remember some attempts in the early 80ties, most likely after 1982.
Sorry, but that's as far as my own knowledge goes.
Smakelijk eten!
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