In the beginning there was the spoon. There was no more table cutlery. One spoon for everything. Today, there are more pieces of cutlery next to the plates, but the spoon has not only survived, but also led to the fact that a horn manufactory still exists in Bøvlingbjerg on the Nissum Fjord. Just a stone’s throw from the Danish North Sea coast, tableware, combs and now also decorations are made from horn here. Horn from this small town with less than 500 inhabitants has even made it into haute couture. The horn from Bøvlingbjerg, or the products made of horn, is something special – homemade, handmade – and owes its success or even its existence to more than just one accident. »With less bad luck in life, Hornvarefabrikken would not have survived until today,« says Peder Frølund Buch, who runs the small factory together with his wife Sara Brunn Buch. SOURCE OF INCOME FOR THE WINTER First there was the war, the DanishBritish one at the beginning of the 19th century, in the course of which, of course, prisoners of war were taken. Knud Høj was one of them. In England he learned the skill of making spoons out of horn and then took this knowledge back to his home on the west coast of central Jutland. If one can do it, all can do it – word got around and the ability of processing horn into spoons, the only cutlery of the poor farmers, was passed on from one person to the next. A sideline IN THE VERY NORTH OF DENMARK THERE IS A SMALL AND VERY SPECIAL HORN MANUFACTORY WITH A LONG HISTORY. TEXT UND FOTOS: KIRSTEN PANZER 61
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