FabrikantDanish
Stelton
0 actieve items
Stelton was founded in Copenhagen in 1960 by two former soldier comrades, Niels Stellan Hom and Carton Madelaire, whose first names were fused to create the company name. Early attempts at selling shoes and furniture came to nothing, but the pair found their footing after connecting with a small stainless steel factory called Danish Stainless in Farevejle, North Zealand. A simple sauce bowl in stainless steel turned out to be popular with Danish hardware stores, and stainless tableware became the company's direction.
The transformation from generic manufacturer to design company came through Peter Holmblad, who joined as sales manager in 1963 and later became CEO. Holmblad was the stepson of Arne Jacobsen, at the time Denmark's most prominent architect and designer. After a family dinner conversation in 1964, Jacobsen agreed to design a complete series for Stelton. The project demanded entirely new production methods - new machines and welding techniques had to be developed to achieve the smooth, seamless cylindrical steel surfaces Jacobsen required. The result, launched in 1967, was the Cylinda-Line: a cocktail and table service built on a single consistent geometric form, the cylinder, with Bakelite handles as the only concession to decoration. The series received the Danish Design Council's ID Prize in the year of its launch, followed by the International Design Award from the American Institute of Interior Designers in 1968. It entered the permanent collections of MoMA and the Cooper Hewitt in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
After Arne Jacobsen's death in 1971, Stelton brought in a young designer named Erik Magnussen, who had trained as a ceramist at the School of Applied Arts and Design in Copenhagen and previously worked at Bing and Grondahl. Magnussen's defining contribution was the EM77 vacuum jug, launched in 1977, with a distinctive rocker stopper that allows one-handed pouring. The EM77 won the ID Prize in 1977 and the iF Design Award in 1992, and has since been produced more than 10 million times. Magnussen was named Designer of the Year by the Danish Design Council in 1983.
Both the Cylinda-Line and the EM77 remain in production. Stelton has continued to expand its range through collaborations with other designers, adding stoneware, beech wood, and French press coffee equipment alongside its stainless steel core. Production of the EM77 and related pieces continues at a factory in Denmark.
On the Nordic auction market, Stelton pieces appear in small but consistent numbers, primarily through Scandinavian generalist houses. Among the 43 recorded lots, the categories are led by silver and metals (17), miscellaneous (13), and lighting (7). Top results include brass bottle trays at SEK 5,789 and Erik Magnussen thermoses at SEK 1,600 - mid-market results in line with widely produced but design-significant objects.