Gutte Eriksen / 1918 - 2008

  • Gutte Eriksen (1918-2008) was educated at the Danish Design School in Copenhagen, but also spent a period with Bernard Leach...
    Gutte Eriksen © Mette Hansen

    Gutte Eriksen (1918-2008) was educated at the Danish Design School in Copenhagen, but also spent a period with Bernard Leach in St Ives in the late 1940s. Yet despite her clear debt to European and Japanese functional traditions, Eriksen managed to develop her own very concentrated language which drew both on the strengths of medieval pottery and a Scandinavian sensibility that focussed on simple forms and rich deep glazing. Eriksen produced big bold dishes, cylinders and bottles defined by darkened and pitted surfaces given character by repeated visits to the kiln. David Attenborough got it right when he described her pots as having the powerful Northern qualities of Sibelius, and certainly her work reflected her own strength of personality. Her influence also found an outlet in her memorable teaching at Jutland Academy of Fine Arts in Aarhus.

    David Whiting

  • AVAILABLE WORKS

  • The sum and substance of Gutte Eriksen's work lies in the wealth of diversity of the same glaze applied to few forms, resulting in a subtle show of hues and gradations of colours and moods. They hark back to nature, or rather, they are derived from nature: the skies, the forests and meadows of Denmark, where the intensity of the daylight can cause contrasts of light and dark that are drier and brighter than in Dutch skies. It is a remarkable achievement that these impressions can be transferred onto ceramics in such an abstract way. Or, interpretation allows one to encounter a thunderstorm on one pot and an impenetrable fog settling on another.

    From Danish Ceramics, Boymans-van Beuningen Museum, by Dr. Johan R. ter Molen, 1995, Rotterdam

  • From Galerie Besson's catalogue of the exhibition 'Gutte Eriksen', 7 March - 6 April 1990 Photograph by Lars Hansen © Politikens Presse Foto, Copenhagen (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).

    From Galerie Besson's catalogue of the exhibition 'Gutte Eriksen', 7 March - 6 April 1990

    Photograph by Lars Hansen © Politikens Presse Foto, Copenhagen

  • ARCHIVE WORK