STIG LINDBERG. “Leda and the Swan”, a sculpture, Gustavsberg, 1940s.

White glazed stoneware. Height 34 cm. Width 28 cm.

Stig Lindberg (1916-1982) was one of Sweden's great designers; perhaps the greatest of them all, given his versatility. He was a ceramist, an industrial designer, a textile artist, a cartoonist... all at once.

Stig Lindberg's design and pattern world came to be part of what defined modern Sweden. Crockery such as Spisa Ribb, Berså and Birka filled the kitchen cupboards during the 50s, 60s and 70s. Krakel Spektakel became a refrain that was played over and over again, in books and on children's dishes. Modernist art wares such as Domino, Vitrin and Pungo ended up in ordinary people's living rooms, and imaginative, playful faience and fabrics became a standing feature of the interior design reports of the weekly newspapers.

He joined Gustavsberg in 1937, and his resourcefulness and creative mind were immediately noticed, with ingenious, humorous tableware decors, and surrealistically inspired sculptures in stoneware. But gradually he became more focused on industrial design, with function and economy as important components of the creator process.

Stig Lindberg was something of an inventor who never stopped experimenting. “Why not the other way around,” was his mantra, and it also led to high-profile new designs, such as triangular plates (LA), wordplay fish as decor on a tableware (Löja) and a television set with a free-standing picture tube (Lumavision).

The scale of his work at Gustavsberg is almost unimaginable: 154 models and decors for tableware, some 40 series of art wares, about a hundred faience patterns and models. In parallel, throughout the time he was at the factory, from the 30s to the 80s, he was active in the atelier, created unique ceramics, which were exhibited and praised at exhibitions in Sweden, Europe, Japan and the USA. Ceramics was his first, great and enduring love, his main trace in life, alongside the inventions of the road.