BERNDT FRIBERG. Vase, Studiohånden, Gustavsberg, signed and dated 1969.

Stoneware. Year Letter K (1969). Height 22 cm.

Berndt Friberg (1899-1981) is widely recognized as one of the most prominent stoneware artists of our time. His classically simple forms, sometimes steadily massive, sometimes light and graceful, and his self-mixed, restrainedly striving or intensely dazzling glazes, are prized by collectors worldwide.

He had a solid foundation to stand on. Already at the age of 13 he started as a handyman at Höganäsbolaget; at the age of 18 he was a complete turner. In the years that followed before his employment at Gustavsberg in 1934, he worked at a variety of ceramics factories, including Svedala Slipvarfabrik, Visby Kakelfabrik and Nyman & Nyman in Höganäs. In Visby, he began seriously experimenting with glazes, something that he would continue with for life. Even there, not just in the field of turning, he would become a virtuoso.

It was as a draftsman for Wilhelm Kåge that he was hired at Gustavsberg. But gradually he was sucked into the artistically oriented atmosphere that prevailed in the art department of the factory, later Gustavsberg Studio. Kåge's network of ceramics connoisseurs, art critics and museum professionals also influenced the artistically driven Friberg to develop himself, challenging him to follow in the footsteps of the Chinese old masters.

As an art ceramist in his own name, he made his debut in 1941, but it was during the 1950s, with a series of solo exhibitions, including at NK, that the breakthrough came. King Gustav VI Adolf and other notables within the exclusive society “Friends of Ceramics” (which cultivated an interest in Nordic and Chinese stoneware) honored the exhibitions with their visits, which were also extensively rewritten and photographed in the press. There was something of a symbiosis between Gustav VI Adolf and Berndt Friberg, between the “king” and the “craftsman”, which eventually resulted in a gift from Friberg to the king on his 90th birthday in 1972, a shatull of 24 of Friberg's handcrafted, glazed and selected miniatures. The shatull for the king was exclusive and was different from the shatull with miniatures previously made.

Berndt Friberg made a point that he was a simple working boy from Höganäs, and did not want to make himself strange. He called himself a “potty maker.” And sure he was, but he could add that he was also the most skilled pot-maker of them all.