Gertrud Vasegaard

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Gertrud Vasegaard , (birth name: Hjorth) (born February 23, 1923 in Rønne ; † July 7, 2007 ) was a Danish ceramist and designer . She was best known for a tea set she designed in 1956, which was rated by the Danish Ministry of Culture as a masterpiece of Danish design and included in the list of the most important Danish works of art. Vasegaard created designs for the porcelain manufacturers Bing & Grondahl and Royal Copenhagen . In her own workshop, she mainly worked with her daughter Myre.

First years and family background

The Hjorth ceramic factory on Bornholm is now a museum

Gertrud Hjort grew up on the island of Bornholm in a family characterized by arts and crafts. Her grandfather Lauritz Hjorth founded a ceramics factory in Rønne in 1859. Subsequently, Gertrud Hjorth's father Hans Hjorth and his brother Peter managed the company. It has been preserved as a ceramic museum and shows visitors old workshops and manufacturing techniques. The mother Johanne Tvede Bruhn was a painter. After finishing school in 1927, Gertrud Hjorth decorated brown, unglazed ceramics in the factory .

In 1930 she began studying in the ceramics department of the newly founded arts and crafts school in Copenhagen . At the same time, she worked for two years in the Holmegaard glassworks to learn new techniques from the ceramicist Christian Pøulsen (1911–1991) and Arne Bang (1901–1983). She then continued her studies in a new workshop with Axel Salto (1889–1961) and Bode Willumsen (1895–1987) and also continued to work in the Holmegaard glassworks.

Career

In 1933 Gertrud Hjorth returned to Bornholm and opened a workshop in Gudhjem with her sister Lisbeth Munch-Petersen . They began to produce pottery and utility ceramics and were able to open an exhibition with their works in Copenhagen in the first year.

In 1935 Gertrude Hjorth married Sigurd Vasegaard and had a daughter Myra. In 1938 the Vasegaards moved to Holkadalen near Gudhjem. They created ornate mugs and bowls from clay, forerunners of later works made of porcelain stoneware . After the war , supply shortages brought the company into economic difficulties. As a way out, Gertrud Vasegaard worked for several winters from 1945 onwards in the Bing & Grøndahl porcelain factory in Copenhagen. For the rest of the year she returned to her workshop on Bornholm. The connection to B & G was established by Aksel Rode, whom she married in 1961. In 1949 she finally moved to B & G as a permanent employee for ten years and specialized in earthenware. This area soon turned out to be one of the most successful departments of the porcelain factory, even opening, as the media and the Danish Ministry of Culture put it, a new era for Danish design . For her work, Vasegaard preferred clear, strong shapes, geometric patterns and colors in soft tones: light green, off-white, light blue and jade . She gained increasing recognition and received national and international prizes for her works.

An unglazed tea service from 1956 earned her particular fame, which experts considered a particularly successful composition of good design and industrial processing options. The cups were designed according to the Chinese model without a handle, the teapot was hexagonal. The Danish Ministry of Culture classified it as a masterpiece of Danish design and placed it on the list of the most important works of art in the country. Three table services that Vasegaard created between 1961 and 1975 for rival Royal Copenhagen also achieved particular success. They were named Capella , Gemina and Gemma .

At the end of 1958 Gerdtrud Vasegaard and Aksel Rode left B & G and opened their own workshop in Frederiksberg together with their daughter Myra . Their bowls, bowls and service with geometric patterns continued to bring international success. From 1969 on, Myra ran the workshop in Frederiksberg alone.

Awards

  • 1957 gold medal at the Milan Triennial
  • 1963 Eckersberg Medal
  • 1979 Kunsthåndværkerrådets Årspris (Annual Craftsman Award)
  • 1981 Thorvald Bindesbøll Medal and the Swedish Prinz Eugen Medal
  • 1992 CF Hansen Medal .

Footnotes

  1. ^ "Gertrud Vasegaard" , The Store Danske . Retrieved January 25, 2013.
  2. a b "Gertrud Vasegaard (1913–2007)" , Dansk Kvindebiografist Leksikon . Retrieved January 25, 2013.
  3. Gertrud Vasegaard In: Dansk Bibliografisk Leksikon (Danish), accessed on January 25, 2013.

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