danish ceramics

Most of us are familiar with Royal Copenhagen China, Danish modern wooden furniture or the heavy sculptured silver from Denmark, but few of us have a chance to see the variety of pottery created by the contemporary Studio Potters, ceramic artists who work in their studios or workshops.

Danish ceramics manage to seem primitive and modern simultaneously, and their scope and diversity are impressive. Danish ceramic is practical as well as beautiful. They are made to be functional, not just a pretty object for a china cupboard or a sculpture to exhibit.

Most ceramic artists from Denmark have served as artists in residence at one of the two leading ceramic factories; Bing & Grondahl or Royal Copenhagen. As it is a small country, most of the designers are familiar with each other’s work. There is generally a solid linear or geometric patterning in the design. Natural earth colours are used in blue or bluish-grey are favourite colours. The shapes are solid and simple classic forms.

Christian Joachim featured image

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Christian Joachim was a Danish Ceramicist (1870-1943). Between 1889 he studied at the Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi, Copenhagen.

Between 1897 and 1900, Joachim made ceramics with George Jensen in a workshop outside Copenhagen. Between 1901 to 1933 worked for the Royal Copenhagen Porcelain Manufactory, where Arno Malinowski sometimes decorated his restrained neoclassical forms. Read More →

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Anders Liljefors was a Swedish ceramicist. He initially concerned himself with household ware, discovered a new method of casting ceramics in a sand mould, and worked feverishly to extract new and unexpected effects from this material during the later years of his life.Read More →

Grethe Meyer ceramics featured image

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She worked on the editorial staff of The Building Manual from 1944 to 1955. She was a crucial figure in Borge Mogensen’s research on the standardisation of consumer product sizes, and she collaborated with him frequently. They created the Boligens Byggeskabe (BB) and resund cabinet-storage systems in 1957.Read More →

Jens Quistgaard teapot featured image

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After the second world war, Jens Harald Quistgaard was apprenticed in the Georg Jensen Solvsmedie in Copenhagen. He has experimented with various media such as wood, metal, glass, steel and ceramics. Ted Nierenberg, the founder of Dansk International, noticed him because of his distinctively Danish craft aesthetic.Read More →