1700-1750 The White Gold

It took five years to produce the 2200 pieces of the Swan Service, ordered in 1737 by Count Heinrich Brühl (1700–1763), finance minister in Saxony and director of the Meissen factory. Chinese porcelain was a coveted collector’s item in Europe from the 16th century on. Faience copies were made, and only in 1708 was Meissen able to manufacture porcelain – with strong Chinese influences. The white, thin, expensive material was known as “white gold”.

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1700–1750 Inspiration from China

The terms ’porcelain’ and ’china’ quickly became a fashion, and were used to increase sales of all sorts of ceramics. In Europe, the blue and white decoration on Chinese porcelain had been associated with the terms since the 17th century. Delft china, from the Netherlands, used faience decorated with blue to imitate genuine china. When Rörstrand applied for a manufacturing permit in Stockholm in the 1720s, it called the activity “Porcellain Manufactur Werk‏‎‟.

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1750-1800 China and Europe

Besides a variety of luxury goods, a large amount of cheaper porcelain was also imported from China. It was known as East India porcelain and made exclusively for export. The Swedish East India Company, formed in 1731, had a monopoly on all trade. It became possible to order sets with one’s noble family’s coat of arms. The Gripsholm service, of more than 700 pieces, was imported in 1776, probably as a gift from the company’s directors to Gustav III.

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1750–1800 Swedish production

Everyone dreamt of being able to make porcelain, which was the height of fashion. Rörstrand was founded in 1726, but the first company to succeed was Marieberg, in 1758, The factory then made soft-paste porcelain during the 1760s. Just over 15 years later items of the coveted hard porcelain could finally be produced. The pioneer products were often given neoclassical forms, inspired by ancient columns, garlands and pine cones.

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1800–1850 Creamware in Europe

Creamware was invented in Britain and became the great technical novelty in 18th-century ceramics production. The material was thinner and lighter than faience, as well as being cheaper to produce. By 1750 creamware was being made in several factories, the most significant of which was Josiah Wedgwood’s. Creamware quickly became popular throughout Europe, and factories copied each other’s designs. It continued to dominate into the 20th century.

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1800–1850 Printed decor

Printed decorations on faience were used in Sweden from the 1760s, with patterns that were easy to adapt to current fashions. Patterns were copied, and sometimes ready-engraved copper plates were bought from Britain. Rörstrand began printing on creamware in the 1810s, and on a larger scale on blue services in the 1820s. The Turkish blue service had a design inspired by rococo revival silver models and modern decorations with oriental scenes.

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1850–1900 Turn to History!

Turn to history! That was what the architect and theoretician Gottfried Semper urged the era’s designers when they sought new, modern patterns and models. Inspiration for the Old Norse style came from Germany; this was combined with growing nationalist sentiment in the 1870s to forge a style that became a model for everything from private houses to furniture. Or, as here, a cup and a saucer and a sauce boat decorated in the spirit of the age.

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1850–1900 Swedish Art Nouveau

The designer Gunnar Wennerberg was inspired by ideas from Britain’s Arts and Crafts movement. Beauty in the home – carefully designed furniture, tableware, textiles – was to be offered to ordinary people. Gustavsberg’s Gullviva service was one of several hand-painted sets, but was so expensive to make that few could afford it. The new chromo print decoration technique lowered manufacturing costs, and made sets more accessible.

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1900–1910 Ceramic Art

The Meiji Restoration of 1854 fully opened Japan’s borders to the outside world, unleashing its influence on arts and crafts. Intriguingly, Japanese ceramics had imperfections, the result of letting chance determine part of the process. Ceramic objects began to be seen as art, beyond their utilitarian function. Nils Barck, a Swede living in France, was inspired by this new thinking and devoted himself mainly to grand feu ceramics on East Asian models.

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1910–1920 Better things for Everyday Life

At the height of the First World War Svenska Slöjdföreningen decided to encourage makers of utility goods to collaborate with artists. Mass-produced goods would be given a prettier, more appealing design and thus help lift “ordinary folk” out of a deprived existence. Wilhelm Kåge’s Liljeblå service for Gustavsberg was presented at the Homes Exhibition of 1917. As it turned out, though, Sweden was not yet ready for such proactive taste training.

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1920–1930 Inspiration from Folk Art

The 1910s brought a change of focus in ceramic arts. Where native plants might previously have been studied for patterns and forms, influences were now of the exotic and historical. Wilhelm Kåge discovered Persian ceramics and was inspired; shown here is a jar with a lid. Their impressions produced an unexpected mix of exotic pomegranates and Dalecarlian kurbits garlands. Designs were often borrowed from the Baroque.

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1920–1930 Swedish Grace

The term “Swedish Grace” was coined by the journalist P Morton Shand at the 1925 World’s Fair in Paris. The style he associated with Swedish designers and architects had an elegance that highlighted materials rather than ornamentation. This blue vase was designed by Louise Adelborg. The ear of corn pattern returned in the well-known Nationalservisen from 1930, which colloquially became known precisely as “Swedish Grace”.

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1930-1940 Beloved services

One of the Chinese plates that survived the 1745 shipwreck of the East Indiaman Götheborg at the entrance to Gothenburg’s harbour. Two centuries later Nils Emil Lundström was captivated by its blue decoration. The marriage of Chinese tradition to 1930s rounded contours yielded the Ostindia service, manufactured by Rörstrand. It is still being made, and continues to inspire young designers, as in the Ostindia+ decoration with its scaled-up pattern.

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1930–1940 Functionalism

Standardisation was a 1930s watchword. Everything could be, and should be, standardised after the right model – which meant buildings and furniture, pots and pans, and domestic items. The Praktika service included many pieces with specific functions. It was presented at the 1934 Standard exhibition at Liljevalchs, organised by Svenska Slöjdföreningen and Svenska Arkitektföreningen, but aroused scant interest. Production was discontinued within a few years.

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1940–1950 Painted faience

Floral decorations in wartime Sweden. A way of spreading hope and joy in times of want and worry? Plant motifs on china and textiles became popular in the 1940s. Gustavsbergs Porslinsfabrik’s 1942 exhibition Faience painted in Spring was a great success. After a couple of decades of Functionalist, austere decorations, the big patterns returned. Faience became a canvas for the artist to paint freely, straight onto the tin glaze.

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1940–1950 Household China

Studies of housewives’ work environment in the 1940s by Hemmens Forskningsinstitut (the Homes Research Institute) led to changes in household china and to standardised kitchens. A china set that met all the new requirements was WB from Gustavsberg. The pieces could be stacked, and were adapted to all mealtime needs. Its rounded edges earned it the name “soft forms service”; it became one of Gustavsberg’s bestsellers.

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1950–1960 The exhibition H55

Gustavsbergs Porslinsfabrik took a bold step forward at the H55 exhibition in Helsingborg, launching a new ceramic material, novarlit. It featured in the innovative set Terma, designed by Stig Lindberg. The pieces could be transferred directly from the oven to the table. Graphic designs such as the black and white pattern of the Domino ashtray or the simple stripes of the Spisa Ribb cup (shown here in its LI model) also signalled a new era.

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1950–1960 Scandinavian Design

The drop shape was a 1950s source of inspiration in furniture, textiles, glass and ceramics. Enthusiasm for organic forms grew. An early example was Hertha Bengtson’s Blå eld service, in which the herringbone decoration reinforces the design. Contrasts, as between different-coloured cups and saucers, were a way of making graphics prominent, but also of allowing for re-combinations of individual pieces. Inherited twelve-piece services were passé.

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1960–1970 Free Ceramic

The 1950s brought a more open-minded approach to ceramics. Anders B Liljefors was one of the innovators. Interest in the material, in exploring the characteristics of clay and glaze, was stronger than the urge to conform to aesthetic tradition or practical function. A playfulness and rebelliousness permeated the objects; an anti-aesthetic of sorts. Buzzwords included change, struggle and liberation – here they are expressed in a vase with runny glaze.

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1960–1970 Pop and Print

Does a plate have to be round? Gustavsberg went for innovation and modernity, with designs that were “exciting, technically complex and would bear a higher price point”. As here, in Röd kant from 1968, a creamware set by Karin Björquist. Embracing an Asian idiom, its pieces were intended to be re-combined for different needs. It turned out to be unsustainable in terms of technique as well as price, but was much loved by savvy consumers.

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1970–1980 Everyday Life Enacted

The ordinary chores and objects of everyday life became a focus of both art and film, as well as crafts and design in the 1970s. Reality inspired many artisans and artists to portray the trivialities. The ceramicist Eva Lagerheim, for example, reproduced the qualities of paper, pencil and a leather strap in Räkneboken from 1969 – but in the solid medium of stoneware, perhaps as a way of highlighting the ordinary.

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1970–1980 Functional Everyday Life

It now became important that everyday crockery was dishwasher safe, that cups and saucers could easily be stacked on shelves, saving space. Function and form were as important in the home as in industrial kitchens. The Brun linje service from 1972 was made from bone china, met all functionality requirements, was sturdy and would not chip even at its thinnest. Karin Björqvist designed it; the printed decoration was designed by Stig Lindberg.

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1980–1990 Postmodern

Postmodernism’s wave swept through the world of architecture, with the Memphis group becoming perhaps its premier representative in design. It was formed in 1981 by the architect and designer Ettore Sottsass along with Alessandro Mendini, Nathalie Du Pasquier, and others. Furniture, lamps, ceramics, glass and textiles brimmed with playfulness – vivid patterns, strong colours, unusual materials and eccentric forms, as in the Nefertiti service from 1985.

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1980–1990 Studio Ceramic

The 1980s were also a time when many ceramicists took up “free form”: objects that exhibited the three-dimensional qualities of sculpture as well as an inherent message – exemplified by Annika Sebardt’s Sprucket ägg in white-glazed stoneware, from 1981. Form and expression were rendered in the texture of the clay and tones of the glaze, inspired by nature and serving as poetic reminders of the fragility of life and the world.

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1990–2000 Services for new needs

The Nordic design and architecture exhibition Nordform 90, held in the summer of 1990 by Svensk Form, the city of Malmö and Form/Design Center on Hjälmare Quay in Malmö, became a vast laboratory of innovation in utility objects, among other areas. For the theme Object for the body Signe Persson-Melin designed this tea set in rustic Höganäs stoneware. A particularly thoughtful detail was the stand with a tea light on which the pot could be kept warm.

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1990–2000 Conceptual Ceramic

Irony made its entry into the field of design just before the turn of the millennium. Designers now tried out new techniques and unfamiliar materials to achieve a twist, a displacement in the design. This is the carrot stand Excalibur from 1994: for one carrot and a dollop of dip sauce. And the piggy bank Ekorr-djävulen from 1991. Both moulded in porous glazed faience and created by the furniture designer Mats Theselius.

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2000–2010 Design for Branding

Design played a crucial role for many companies in building their brands and corporate values. SAS, the airline, was no exception. Stockholm Design Lab was commissioned to rework its corporate identity completely, from visual design to the planes’ livery and beyond. Business class travellers, for example, were treated to meals on china by Ursula Pedersen, in glasses by Gunnar Cyrén, with cutlery by Bo Bonfils.

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2010–2020 Artistic Research

This realistic object evinces a relationship with several 1970s artisans’ recreations of everyday objects. But Äggmacka i Big Pack, of glazed earthenware, can better be described as part of a strategic artistic research effort into boundaries and hierarchies of materials. What is applied art? What can be seen as sufficiently prestigious to portray? In 2010 there were two doctoral students in applied arts. Frida Hållander was one of them.

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2010–2020 Our Age Annotated

Figurines were particularly disdained in the 20th century by those who celebrated simple designs and practical function. Today, as in the 18th century, the ability of objects to tell stories is appreciated. Vacuum Cleaning Lady by Gittan Jönsson tells us about Western women, oppressed by patriarchal social structures and by unseen (second) jobs. And yet she is rebellious and proud. She pushes her way with dignity through life and other dusty corners.

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