Bacchus Antik: Part 6 - Berndt Friberg

Bacchus Antik – A Series of Themed Auctions
Bacchus Antik is the title for a series of ongoing themed auctions this autumn and spring, where large parts of Bacchus Antik’s rich and diverse inventory will go under the hammer. Owner Michael Strömquist has decided to scale back, and at Formstad Auktioner we are both proud and delighted to present these auctions in close collaboration with Bacchus Antik.
Bacchus Antik has long held a unique position among Stockholm’s antique dealers. The shop was established in Stockholm in 1994, after seven years in Kivik on Österlen, and has become a true meeting place for anyone interested in 20th-century design and decorative arts. It is the kind of place where one can step inside and immediately find oneself discussing anything from Danish lamps to Berndt Friberg’s exquisite ceramics. The shop has also served as a school of sorts for many aspiring collectors and dealers.
The atmosphere is refreshingly unpretentious. Exclusive design classics stand side by side with vinyl records in plastic crates. This coexistence between the everyday and the distinguished is rare in Stockholm, and part of what makes anyone who steps inside feel instantly at home. Perhaps this has to do with the owner himself always keeping his feet firmly on the ground. His father was an ICA grocer, as were his grandparents, who each ran their own store, one in Tommarp and the other in Gärsnäs. From that side of the family came the sense for buying and selling, while the love for objects themselves was shaped at home by his mother. When the choice was between a new teak table and an old farmhouse table, the latter always won – because that’s what she wanted.
Michael inherited the best of both worlds and became an antique dealer almost by destiny – one who acquired through his own passion, and who insists on “looking properly” at an object before letting it leave the shop. Some items, he admits, he still hasn’t finished looking at. “I was born a collector,” he says. “In a way, the shop is my collection. As a child I collected everything – film stars, matchboxes, spent rockets, movie tickets, coins, Merry bottle caps… I kept everything that was nice.”
Now, a significant part of all these “nice things” will be offered at auction, for you to bring home and look at yourself. It is a unique opportunity – one that will never come again.

Part VI – Berndt Friberg

"You can't get tired of Friberg," says Michael Strömquist. "I've bought and sold Friberg over the years, maybe mostly bought, because I couldn't help myself!" He says he's always fascinated by how the same Friberg vase takes on different expressions depending on the time of day, how constantly new nuances can be extracted from a silk-matt haresfur glaze. "If you have one vase, you have several, I usually say."

"I also like that he came from the clay and the factory in Höganäs and made the whole journey up to the old king in Stockholm. It's like a fairy tale, that the boy who dropped out of school when he was 13 and started at the factory ended up as a royal supplier of world-class stoneware."

Michael believes that Sweden has never had a ceramist like Friberg, but that we don't appreciate him enough here at home. "I've always had a lot of customers from the US and Japan, well from everywhere really, at Friberg. He's the biggest thing we have, that's all."

A definite highlight of the auction is the large collection of vases with deep blue haresfur glaze and the rare case, only made in about 20 examples, with 24 miniatures.