Gertrud Vasegaard – Nordic Pottery Tradition
Artistic sensitivity and hard work – with her tactile stoneware, ceramicist Gertrud Vasegaard (1913-2007) has undergone something of a renaissance among collectors from all over the world in recent years. With Vasegaard’s work, it is all about the beauty of the imperfect, and the balance between weight, movement, rhythm and harmony. She began her professional career in the 1930s but left a deep mark on Danish ceramics over seven decades. Although her works received international attention early on, she never sought fame as a modernist craftswoman herself, preferring instead to be seen as a free artist, unconstrained by the trends of the day.
Vasegaard was the third generation of a family of potters from Bornholm whose ceramic work dated back to the mid-19th century. So it was written in the stars for her, and she started at the School of Arts and Crafts in Copenhagen in 1930. A few years later, she became a student of Axel Salto, but returned to her native island in 1933 and established her own pottery workshop in Gudhjem. During the Second World War, she became part of the powerful creative community whose members included artists such as Ejler Bille and Sonja Ferlov Mancoba, whom she had met at the School of Arts and Crafts and who now lived on Bornholm as a result of the war. Vasegaard later established fruitful collaborations with Bing & Grøndal and the Royal Porcelain Factory (Royal Copenhagen).
Ceramics by Vasegaard are, on the one hand, deeply rooted in a Nordic pottery tradition, but at the same time take the discipline of ceramics to new heights with their simple geometric ornamentation and the emphasis on the structure of the clay under the ultra-thin glaze. With their heavy stoneware, simple shapes, warm, earthy colours and the herringbone, rhombus, teardrop and trellis patterns, Vasegaard’s works have a special nerve that makes them the epitome of the interior design style of the late 1960s and today.
Highlights from Gertrud Vasegaard at the Auction
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