The design writer and collector Dung Ngo owns more than 10,000 pieces of cutlery. It started 25 years ago, when Ngo turned 30 and decided that “the cutlery I bought after college from Target, no longer fit who I was.” He found a 40-piece set he loved in a vintage shop for $400, and spent a week searching through old design journals until he identified it: Composition, by the renowned Finnish designer Tapio Wirkkala. These days, a complete Wirkkala set can fetch upwards of $3,600.
The discovery started an obsession, with Ngo buying piece after piece of iconic cutlery from eBay and antique shops, searching for matches to grainy photographs he found in design magazines from the 1940s, 50s and…