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Gunnar Nylund
Gunnar Nylund (1904-1997)
Ceramist Gunnar Nylund was equally active in Sweden and in Denmark but is best known for his work at Rörstrand. He was trained as an architect in Copenhagen in the 1920’s, but his greatest influences in the early years
were his parents, his mother a Danish ceramist and his father a Finnish painter and sculptor.
Due to poor employment opportunities as an architecht, Nylund took advantage of his ceramist skills gained at the family studio and applied for a job at Bing & Gröndahl in Copenhagen. He stayed there for five years, but then decided to start his own workshop, Saxbo, together with Danish ceramist Natahalie Krebs whom he had met at Bing & Gröndahl.
Nylund experimented with forms, Krebs with glazes. After an exhibition at Svenskt Tenn in Stockholm 1930, Gunnar Nylund was discovered by Rörstand. He joined
Rörstrand and remained with this firm as one of its leading designers until 1958.
In the 1930’s Nylund created graceful, modernist pieces in richly glazed stoneware and sculptors in a rough chamotte ware. Parallel with producing unique pieces, he designed series of utility ware in porcelain. Nylund was a technician who with an artistic eye could see a range of possibilities with different materials. He sought functionality and beauty in useful objects. After the war he produced work in a more asymmetric, abstract line vein.
Gunnar Nylund returned to Denmark in 1959 to assume a position as art director at the Nymölle pottery. He left this company after a few years to work on a freelance basis for both Rörstrand and Strombergshyttan. His last
project was his own studio in Malmö, concentrating on glass design and sculpture in metal.
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