STIG LINDBERG. Dish, Studiohanden, Gustavsberg, signed and dated 1970.

Unique piece. Stoneware. Diameter 15 cm. Height 4 cm.

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

Stig Lindberg's design and world of patterns became part of what defined modern Sweden. Tableware series such as Spisa Ribb, Berså, and Birka filled kitchen cupboards during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. Krakel Spektakel became a refrain that was played over and over again, in books and on children's tableware. Modernist art pottery series like Domino, Vitrin, and Pungo ended up in the living rooms of ordinary people, and imaginative, playful faience and fabrics became a permanent feature in the interior design reports of weekly magazines.

He started at Gustavsberg in 1937, and his ingenuity and creative mind were immediately apparent, with subtle, humorous tableware decorations and surrealistically inspired stoneware sculptures. Gradually, however, he became more focused on industrial design, with function and economy as important components in the creative 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 acclaimed new designs, such as triangular plates (LA), pun-filled fish as decoration on a tableware series (Löja), and a television set with a free-standing picture tube (Lumavision).

The scope of his contribution at Gustavsberg is almost inconceivable: 154 models and patterns for tableware, around 40 art pottery series, and hundreds of faience patterns and models. In parallel, throughout the time he was at the factory, from the 1930s to the 1980s, he was active in the studio, creating unique ceramics that were shown and praised at exhibitions in Sweden, Europe, Japan, and the USA. Ceramics was his first, great, and enduring love, his main path in life, alongside the inventions along the way.