“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 hundreds of teakwood carving boards he bought all through the 1970’s. “If you happen to used it—and didn’t abuse it—it lasts ceaselessly.” The 5, 50-year-old, Jens Quistgaard-designed carving boards Richard nonetheless ceaselessly makes use of are, seemingly, on monitor for ceaselessly.
So are lots of the different authentic 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 “wonderful situation”—a declare every itemizing’s accompanying photographs almost all the time assist.
Photograph by Mark Weinberg
This sturdiness isn’t some blissful accident. As Richard talked about, teak—because of its tight grain and excessive oil content material—is of course water repellant, lengthy making it a shipbuilder’s most popular wooden. Whereas salad bowls gained’t endure the aquatic pounding of excessive seas journey, kitchens are moist. Sinks exist. Which means, for Dansk, the extra a wood kitchen merchandise might stand up to moisture, the higher. “We approached teak as a useful product,” Richard stated.
“And it had character and it might age properly,” added Barry Ginsburg, the previous President of Dansk. The character—a deep, omnipresent grain coursing by way of each inch of its easy and impossibly sturdy floor—is unrelenting. Getting 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 no less than twice a 12 months,” Richard informed me. “For items that we use ceaselessly, I would oil them six instances a 12 months—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 prospects’ waning curiosity in a fussier materials. “Within the seventies, the individuals I knew getting married and beginning to generate profits wished to maneuver away from sterling silver plates and equipment—so all of them purchased Dansk.”
Fifty years later, teak kitchenware—due partly to a resurgent curiosity in mid-century design—is, once more, in vogue. Marrying sturdiness with magnificence, shoppers, like peppermill collectors Alex Severin and Maren Lankford (and Christopher Walken’s character in Severance), entrust these highly-functioning items of kitchen tools to double as inside design items. “They’re little wood sculptures,” Maren stated throughout our latest interview.
Photograph by Armando Rafael
Customers new to teak will discover that the wooden Dansk used all through the 60’s and 70’s is completely different from what’s out there immediately. For a lot of the twentieth century, the world’s teak predominantly got here from 4 nations—Burma, Laos, Thailand, and India. Nonetheless, attributable to rampant deforestation and critical human rights considerations, old-growth teak (which has the tightest grain and darkest shade) harvested from these nations has successfully vanished from the market. In flip, immediately’s teak, which generally comes from plantations unfold all through the globe, is commonly harvested youthful, due to this fact sporting a lighter shade and extra dispersed grain.
Whereas, for good purpose, its shade has shifted, teak’s sturdiness persists. The wooden stays water resistant, shapeable, and—to the contact—undeniably sturdy. Or, simply as Richard described Dansk’s teak from fifty years in the past, “It’s useful and it really works.”
