TYRA LUNDGREN. Sculpture, bird, own studio, Bredkvie, Gotland.

Chamotted stoneware on stone plinth. Monogram signed. Height including plinth 13,5 cm.

Swedish stoneware, considered an art genre of its own, was paradoxically born in Denmark, with that of Höganäs fertile ceramist Patrick Nordström. His stoneware for Den Kongelige Porcelainsfabrik (Royal Copenhagen) was considered to be able to match the best French stoneware. Patrick Nordström made a breakthrough at the Baltic Exhibition in Malmö in 1914, and several Danish and Swedish museums, including the Nationalmuseum, bought into his work.
In direct descent from him we find Gunnar Nylund, later artistic director at Rörstrand, who had contact with Nordström in Copenhagen and who, together with the Danish Nathalie Krebs, rented himself in Nordström's workshop in Islev on the outskirts of Copenhagen.

After Nordström's death in 1929, Nylund and Krebs continued with stoneware in his workshop, with the aim of producing a stoneware that could be produced in larger series and reach a wider audience. But after a few years, they go their separate ways. Both nevertheless realize the original common goal — Krebs with Saxbo, who becomes the single foremost exponent of modern Danish stoneware, and Nylund with his new stoneware for Rörstrand.

Gunnar Nylund's exhibition at Galerie Moderne in Stockholm in 1932 takes the critics by storm. The following year Saxbo exhibits in Sweden, also to the delight of critics, and the modern, “functional” stoneware can now be said to be established on Swedish soil.

In parallel, Wilhelm Kåge experimented at Gustavsberg with a highly burnished ware in rust-brown tones which he called Farsta. It was shown at the Stockholm Exhibition in 1930 and was received with applause as something completely new. Farsta becomes a collective name for Kåge's art ceramics and appears in cylindrical and other geometric shapes, with rough reliefs, abstract “primitive” carvings and rose-started glaze effects. Kåge worked with Farstagodset right up until his death in 1960. In an interview in 1953, he stated: “For me, Farsta has first and last been the only truly uncompromising thing in my work at Gustavsberg.”

Even art critics now began to speak of the stoneware as a species in itself — a complicated process with high demands on workmanship regarding clays, glaze mixtures and firing methods. When the Crown Prince, later King Gustav VI Adolf, known for his knowledge of and collections of Chinese ceramics, begins to build a collection of Danish and Swedish stoneware, interest grows. At the factories Rörstrand and Gustavsberg, artistic stoneware becomes a necessity, a status item; exhibitions replace each other, and new names and workshops connect. Stoneware fever is taking hold in Sweden.

Berndt Friberg came to Gustavsberg as early as 1934, and what he — this master turner and glaze fanatic — then accomplished in his studio made collectors all over the world, especially Gustav VI Adolf, lose their chins. Friberg's stoneware with Asian influences was as close to perfection as it could get.

The spouses Ingrid and Erich Triller started the stoneware workshop Tobo in Uppland in 1935 and made a success of their debut exhibition at NK the following year, where everything was sold and they were praised for “strict objectivity”. So they had also trained with the Bauhaus ceramicist Otto Lindig.

Edgar Böckman, with his own workshop at Danderydsgatan 9 in Stockholm from 1935, is also one of the pioneers of Swedish stoneware. He finally burned his linear, abstract vases in the ovens of Höganäsbolaget, where he served as artistic director 1915—26.

Stig Lindberg, from the beginning and all his life, was most obsessed with the possibilities of stoneware. Throughout his time at Gustavsberg, occupied with as many varied tasks as he was, he never abandoned stoneware and, in addition to comics, also created a large amount of unikat that could shift in style from the highest vases of the 1950s to the more basic objects of the 1970s, with pressed and stamped designs and reliefs.

Tyra Lundgren was associated with Gustavsberg as a freelancer during the 1940s and became known for her birds in chamotted stoneware, but also meant a lot as an enlightener and propagandist, mainly through her book Mud och Fire — A Ceramic Vagabondage Through Europe (1946).

Carl-Harry Stålhane came to Rörstrand in 1947 and made a classic stoneware, first in Nylund's succession but then increasingly independently and experimentally. In 1973 he started his own business with Designhuset, where experiments continued.

As direct heirs of Patrick Nordström, one can also see the potters John Andersson, Åke Holm, Henning Nilsson and Claes Thell active in Höganäs. All of these artists can be said to have cultivated stoneware as an artistic genre of their own. Most are part of Gustav VI Adolf's collection of Danish and Swedish stoneware.

For those who may want to make like the old king and collect a representative collection of Swedish stoneware, it is not a stupid idea to start from an auction like this, with items from Bacchus Antiks's rich assortment. Here are all the big names, from Patrick Nordström onwards.