STIG LINDBERG'S BIOMORPHIC CERAMICS

Stig Lindberg

 In ceramics, joie de vivre is usually associated with the Mediterranean – the tin-glazed pottery of Spain or Vallauris.  But there's something about tin-glaze itself that brings it out, even in the north.  One of its great exponents was Stig Lindberg (1916-1982), the prolific Swedish designer who spent most of his career at the Gustavsberg pottery factory.

Lindberg studied at the Swedish State School of arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, with the intention of becoming a painter.  He started at Gustavsberg in 1937 and became their art director in 1949.  He remained with the company until 1980, when he retired to Italy to set up his own studio.

Stig Lindberg, dish, 1950s

Hans Arp, Winged Being, 1961

Much of his work was in faience, painted tin-glaze, in which he made a modernist re-interpretation of an old method of decoration.  His faience designs were painted directly in-glaze, an expensive method of decoration also used, in a similar medium, by the Poole Pottery in Dorset.

In the 1950s, many of Lindberg's  forms were derived from biomorphism, a movement in painting and sculpture that evoked living forms but was generally non-representational. The most consistent exponent of biomorphism was Hans Arp.  Many of Miró's forms were biomorphic too.  In the post-war period, biomorphism heavily influenced the applied arts.  Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth produced biomorphic sculptures - Moore's representational, Hepworth's abstract.  Because of their fame in Britain and the diffusion of biomorphism into interior design, biomorphism became emblematic of modernism.  There were lots of cartoons of puzzled museum visitors looking through holes in biomorphic sculptures – but they went home and used biomorphic glassware, biomorphic ceramics, textiles with biomorphic motifs and even biomorphic furniture.

Stig Lindberg, Bowl and cover, 1947

Stig Lindberg, vases, 1950s

Biomorphic table, early 1950s, Widdicomb