Knife Fork Spoon / Denver Art Museum

Knife Fork Spoon: Everyday Tools, Extraordinary Design at the Denver Art Museum. Curated by Dung and Darrin Alfred, Curator of Architecture and Design. 

 Dung Ngo has spent decades piecing together an extensive flatware collection. He estimates it to be around 10,000 pieces.

This exhibition includes 150 sets.

 It's arranged chronologically.

In my opinion, Russel Wright had one of the best knives in the game.

A group of Dung's friends were in Denver to see the exhibition and lection. Inevitably everyone was asked what they use at home.

Sori Yanagi is what I use.

Snow Peak is what I use for bike camping. It's titanium, for the weight weenies.

I have a handful of pieces of Nth by Adolph Tischler Nth. I would like to get more but I do eat my yogurt with the spoon.

Tischler commissioned R.M. to design a house for him, which included a carport Adolph used as a studio. Learn more, here. 

Museum visitors can even test drive some flatware. 

The exhibition covers designs to present day.

Prototype design by Marcin Rusak (2026). It's part of Knife Fork Spoon 3.0. The project, curated by Dung Ngo and Marta, is exploring the future of flatware through 3D printing. Twelve architects, artists, and designers were commissioned to create contemporary cutlery collections.

Dung has also produced a new modernist cutlery bible, Knife Fork Spoon: Modernist Cutlery 1900-2025. You can't tell from this photo, but at 600 pages, it's huge.

Our friend Tung's design, Muir, for Heath is in the book. It was produced by Sherrill Manufacturing, the only company still making flatware in the United States. More about that, here.

Also, one of my favorite servers. 

There comes a point in collecting when the weight of your hoard is too much for your dwelling to handle. This seems to be the case for Dung. Along with the exhibition and book, Wright is doing a sale of a select number of pieces from his collection. Check that out here.

BTW, Dung uses Form 3600 by William Wagenfeld at home. In the book, Dung talks about how 

there wasn't any flatware produced at Bauhaus. However, since Wagenfeld was a student at Bauhaus, his set from 1952 is the closest thing there is.

Source: Wright