Tag: Scandinavian design

Designer Desire: Astri Holthe

Montage of Astri Holthe jewellery designs | H is for Home

When last have we featured some vintage Scandi jewellery here on our blog? It’s been too long! It must be something in the water up there – Norway, Finland, Sweden and Denmark have produced so many outstanding jewellery designers and Astri Holthe is one to include in that assemblage.

Astri Holthe (1917-1998) was a mid-century Norwegian designer-maker specialising in metal. In 1949, she and her husband, Gerhard, founded what would become a very successful factory near the Norwegian town of Arendal in the Barbu valley. Twenty years later, their factory had 90-100 employees.

Many of Holthe’s designs are made of pewter, therefore pieces are very affordable. Vintage pendants can be had for under the £50 mark. You can regularly find examples for sale on eBay and Etsy.

Portrait of Astri Holthecredit

Additional image credits:

Etsy | Pinterest

Designer Desire: Ib Antoni

Montage of Ib Antoni designs

We’ve been publishing our weekly Designer Desire series for about 3 years now, so you’d forgive us for forgetting who we have, and haven’t, featured so far. One of the items that we get contacted about most often is a vintage Ib Antoni poster (pictured in the montage above). It advertises Danish Fortnight at Neiman-Marcus in Dallas, Texas; we could have sold it dozens of times over! We’re really surprised that we haven’t researched and shared some of the other fabulous designs that he created.

Ib Antoni (1929-1973) was born in Esbjerg, Denmark. He was commissioned by over 150 international brands and companies such as Carlsberg, UNICEF, Philips, Lurpak, Volvo and Life Magazine.

As well as advertising and illustration, Antoni designed textiles and porcelain for Royal Copenhagen and Bing and Grøndahl. In 1968, he illustrated a sweet, little children’s book, Merry Cherry, a story by Henning Nystad about a starling in love with an unattainable cherry. The cover illustration can be seen in the montage above – second from bottom, on the right.

In 1973 at the age of only 44, he tragically died following an arson attack at Copenhagen’s Hotel Hafnia. His legacy work is being reproduced for sale by his family and a small number of original examples can still be found on Etsy.

Visit the official Ib Antoni Instagram feed to see lots of other examples of his work and a few really interesting contemporaneous photographs of his designs out in the wild!

 

 
 
 
 
 
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A post shared by Ib Antoni (@ibantoni)

Additional image credits:

IbAntoni.dk

Designer Desire: Egersund

Various ceramic designs from Egersund

This post was initially going to be about Kåre Blokk Johansen. However, so little is known about him and his designs that we’ve expanded it to include a couple of other Egersund designers. The pottery was in existence from 1847 to 1979, but we’re going to concentrate (mainly) on the mid-century modern designs.

Similar to Finel, shapes would often be designed by one designer and the pattern would be by another. For example, the Solsikke (Sunflower) and Lagune (Lagoon) patterns were applied to the Korulen shape. The Chérie pattern was done on the Circle shape.

What we do know, however, is that the popular Razorbill ‘alkemuggen’ (top) were designed by Jacob Kielland Sømme. They were available in five sizes and produced almost continuously from 1910 to 1979.

Blokk Johansen, the longest serving designer at the company, was responsible for the Unique (manufactured between 1971 and 1976) and Kongo patterns.

Unni Margrethe Johnsen (1942-2001) designed the patterns Lagune (Lagoon) and Solsikke (Sunflower).

Ingrid Marcussen designed the pretty Chérie pattern in 1966.

We have a few Egersund items for sale in our shop at the moment. There are also some available on eBay and Etsy.

If you can help fill in some of the blanks (or errors) in our knowledge, we’d appreciate your insight!

Shapes/patterns (from top to bottom, left to right):

• Razorbill ‘alkemuggen’ – Jacob K. Sømme
• Shape unknown/Inka
• Shape unknown/2 x Kongo
• Shape unknown/Cairo
• Shape unknown/Perfekt (Perfect)
• Shape unknown/Perfekt Sirkel (Perfect Circle)
• Korulen/pattern unknown
• Korulen/Solsikke (Sunflower)
• Unique/pattern unknown
• Unique/Appel (Apple)
• Circle/Chérie
• Korulen/Lagune (Lagoon)

Image credits:

Heidi Arstad | Tove

Designer Desire: Viola Gråsten

Montage of designs by Viola Gråsten | H is for Home

Viola Gråsten (1910-1994) was a leading Finnish textile designer. Her most well-known pattern is probably Oomph (pictured at the very top of the montage above) which was printed in a number of colourways.

Some of the fabric patterns that she designed include Sparv (1959) and Hassel for Ljungbergs; the striped Snark blankets (see above) for Tidstrand; Tulipuu, Såpbubblor, Casa (1954) and Kalas (1955) for Swedish department store, Nordiska Kompaniet (NK) and Pelagonia (1965) and Kastanj (1966) for Mölnlycke Tuppen AB.

Her eye-catching rug designs produced for Elsa Gullberg’s Textiles and Interior in Stockholm have come to be known as Gråstens colours. She also produced a great many rug designs for the aforementioned, NK Textilkammare.

There are currently a number of her textile designs available on Etsy – including rugs, blankets and lengths of fabric.

I’ve come across a book by Anne-Marie Ericsson, Viola Gråsten och modernismen i svensk textilkonst (Viola Gråsten and modernism in Swedish textile art), that delves into the history of her creations.

 

 
 
 
 
 
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A post shared by Designarkivet

Additional image credits:

Artnet | Auctionet | Bukowskis