“If it was ok to placed on the hull of a ship, it was ok to place a steak on it,” stated Richard Cohen, Dansk’s former head of gross sales, in reference to the 1000’s of teakwood carving boards he offered all through the 1970’s. “When you used it—and didn’t abuse it—it lasts without end.” The 5, 50-year-old, Jens Quistgaard-designed carving boards Richard nonetheless steadily makes use of are, seemingly, on monitor for without end.
So are lots of the different unique Dansk teak merchandise. On eBay, the search question “Dansk teak” yields greater than 3,500 outcomes, together with ice buckets, serving trays, salad bowls, and the extremely collectible peppermills. Regardless of lots of this stuff exceeding a half-century in age, it’s widespread, if not anticipated, for these listings (very like Richard’s carving boards) to indicate that its teak stays in “glorious situation”—a declare every itemizing’s accompanying images almost all the time help.
Picture by Mark Weinberg
This sturdiness isn’t some completely happy accident. As Richard talked about, teak—due to its tight grain and excessive oil content material—is of course water repellant, lengthy making it a shipbuilder’s most well-liked wooden. Whereas salad bowls gained’t endure the aquatic pounding of excessive seas journey, kitchens are moist. Sinks exist. That means, for Dansk, the extra a picket kitchen merchandise may face up to moisture, the higher. “We approached teak as a practical product,” Richard stated.
“And it had character and it will age properly,” added Barry Ginsburg, the previous President of Dansk. The character—a deep, omnipresent grain coursing via each inch of its clean and impossibly sturdy floor—is unrelenting. Growing old properly, nonetheless, requires some, albeit comparatively minimal, effort. “Teak must be oiled periodically,” Barry stated. “You may’t put it out in zero diploma humidity within the desert and anticipate that it’s not going to dry up.”
For Richard, whose teak assortment features a small and huge ice bucket, eight serving trays, 4 peppermills, and the aforementioned 5 carving boards, upkeep is bifurcated. “I oil my teak with mineral oil not less than twice a yr,” Richard informed me. “For items that we use steadily, I would oil them six occasions a yr—however that’s my very own fetish.”
Though teak requires some upkeep, per Richard, Dansk’s preliminary success with the wooden got here in response to their clients’ waning curiosity in a fussier materials. “Within the seventies, the individuals I knew getting married and beginning to make cash needed to maneuver away from sterling silver plates and equipment—so all of them purchased Dansk.”
Fifty years later, teak kitchenware—due partially to a resurgent curiosity in mid-century design—is, once more, in vogue. Marrying sturdiness with magnificence, customers, like peppermill collectors Alex Severin and Maren Lankford (and Christopher Walken’s character in Severance), entrust these highly-functioning items of kitchen gear to double as inside design items. “They’re little picket sculptures,” Maren stated throughout our current interview.
Picture by Armando Rafael
Shoppers new to teak will discover that the wooden Dansk used all through the 60’s and 70’s is completely different from what’s obtainable at this time. For a lot of the twentieth century, the world’s teak predominantly got here from 4 nations—Burma, Laos, Thailand, and India. Nonetheless, on account of rampant deforestation and critical human rights considerations, old-growth teak (which has the tightest grain and darkest colour) harvested from these nations has successfully vanished from the market. In flip, at this time’s teak, which generally comes from plantations unfold all through the globe, is commonly harvested youthful, due to this fact sporting a lighter colour and extra dispersed grain.
Whereas, for good purpose, its colour has shifted, teak’s sturdiness persists. The wooden stays waterproof, shapeable, and—to the contact—undeniably robust. Or, simply as Richard described Dansk’s teak from fifty years in the past, “It’s practical and it really works.”
