SYLVIA STAVE. A pair of candlesticks, C.G. Hallberg, funk, 1930s.

Round feet with grooved pillars, the drop plates closest to conical and smooth, stamped CGH G8 (for 1933) and engraved signatures S Stave, height 6, diameter approx. 13 cm

HISTORIAN
Sylvia Stave was born in Växjö in 1908 as Sylvia Gadd. At 21 years old, she moved to Stockholm and joined the Higher Art Industrial School at the Technical School in Stockholm (later Konstfack) in 1929. Stave soon applied himself to C.G. Hallberg, and after a successful participation in the Stockholm exhibition, at the age of just 23 she became artistic director of the firm. During a short but intense period of about ten years, she designed for Hallberg a variety of objects in tin, silver and nickel silver, in a typically austere and clean design language. Stave's designs are characterized by a penchant for the stripped-down geometric yet sculptural, and she gladly avoided unnecessary decorative additions. At the age of 31, she left Sweden for a life as a housewife in France, and with it her flourishing career behind her. For a long time, the name Stave was the confidant of only an initiated few. But Alessi's remaking of her cocktail shaker at the end of the 1980s, marked the beginning of a renewed interest in her artistry - even though her designs were first wrongly marketed as being designed by Bauhaus icon Marianne Brandt. Today, Stave's pure design language is internationally appreciated and recognized by collectors and museum institutions alike.

LITERATURE
About Stave, see Ernstell, Micael & Olausson, Magnus (2014). Sylvia Stave in the National Museum.