Dansk, the midcentury kitchenware brand famous for its colorful enamel pots, now has a new home. Form Portfolios, a boutique firm that specializes in managing designers’ archives, has purchased the company from Food52 for $250,000.

Form Portfolios was founded in 2016 and has offices in Rhode Island and Copenhagen, and has been managing the archive of Dansk’s original designer, Jens Quistgaard, since 2023. It now plans to build on the brand’s legacy by reintroducing never-before-seen pieces by the late designer. “We are honored to bring the warmth and timeless quality of Dansk to a new generation that values living with modern design in their homes,” says Mark Masiello, founder and CEO of Form Portfolios.

The acquisition expands Form Portfolios’s roster of classic and contemporary designers and architects, which includes works by Louis Kahn, Charles and Ray Eames, and Gianfranco Frattini. At Salone del Mobile in 2023, in a partnership with Cassina, Form debuted Galaxy, a light designed in the late 1940s by Ray and Charles Eames that had never been put into production.

Food52 acquired Dansk in 2021 from Lenox Corporation, hoping to expand its own physical line and revitalize the Danish homeware brand. Form Portfolios’s announcement of the acquisition comes as Food52 was sold earlier this week for $10.3 million at a bankruptcy auction following its Chapter 11 filing, which broke up the company.

Despite its name, Dansk—Danish for “Danish”—was established by Theodore and Marth Nierenberg on Long Island in 1954. After visiting Germany and Copenhagen, they discovered forged flatware pieces by Quistgaard, then a young Danish artist and designer. The Nierenbergs convinced him that his pieces could be mass-produced, leading to a partnership in which Quistgaard served as chief designer for the newly founded company and its first product line, Fjord flatware.

Then as now, Dansk is beloved for its primary-colored Købenstyle cookware; the hardy pieces are made of steel with an enamel surface and feature cross-shaped lids that double as trivets. Dansk also offers a line of teak salad bowls, a series of sculptural teak pepper mills, cutlery, and dozens of other pieces, as well as thousands of designs under the Quistgaard name.

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