Bjørn Sigurd Østern

(b. 1938) In the early 1960s, the David-Andersen Company again needed a new dynamic designer to modernize the company image and update the production lines along with the recent development of taste. Bjørn Sigurd Østern was chosen, and he was to work with the company on a regular basis,1961-73 as well as from 1974 until 1985. Studying at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) 1956-61, Østern had been awarded ‘Best Student’. He spent 1963 in the US on a scholarship from the diamond company ‘de Beers Consolidated Mines’ and he held exhibitions in New York in 1964 and 1965. Østern and Harry Sørby, who had been with David-Andersen since 1929, were the leading designers of the company in the sixties and seventies, contributing to a new and modern look that continued the company’s already strong tradition of Scandinavian Design. - Courtesy of the book: Northern Lights, The Beauty of the Forgotten Scandinavian Enamel Jewelry Artists by Lois Olson and Dwight Olson