Designer: Max Bailly and Max Kraft

Item: Carving set 5009

Manufactured by: Amboss Neuzeughammer Germany

Country of origin: Germany

Year made: Early 1970s

Materials: Stainless steel and plastic

Dimensions: Knife is 12” long and 1 ¾” at its widest; fork is 11 ½” long and 1 ¼” at its widest

Description: Here is a futuristic 1970s pop culture carving set designed by the design team known as “Max-Design”, aka “maxdesign” a firm created by Max Bailly and Max Kraft. We initially thought this was the work of Janos Megyik, another designer who produced award-winning flatware designs for Amboss due to its stylistic similarities to Megyik’s work. However, this design was documented in the Averwerser/Muller-Dehn book (see below) that a dealer in Austria recently alerted us to. We have not been able to find any additional information on Bailly or Kraft, but clearly they had some style. We have only ever seen this set with wood handles and the Amboss Made in Austria marks, but we have seen other Amboss later designs by other designers that were made in Germany, and the Averwerser/Muller-Dehnbook has a page of all the Amboss marks, and this is one of them.

Condition: Excellent and appears mint and unused.

References: Averwerser, Heinz-Jurgen and Muller-Dehn, Jorg, Amboss: Bestecke - Flatware 1950 - 1992, Katalog zu den Ausstellungen in Solingen und Hannover 2010;