Spaltekanden, the slit jug, and Kuglerund Tepotte, the round teapot, were shown at Nationalmuseum in Stockholm in 1933. Eva Stæhr-Nielsen had designed them for Nathalie Krebs‘ stoneware workshop Saxbo, and both stayed in production until Saxbo closed in 1968. In 2018 Spring Copenhagen relaunched them, working with her family.
She was born Eva Wilhjelm in Frederiksberg in 1911. Her mother had been one of the first women at the Royal Academy’s art school for women, her father was a bookseller who later ran Dansk Rejsebureau, and the painter Johannes Wilhjelm was her uncle. She knew early she wanted to be a ceramicist, but her parents wanted her to finish school first. She never did, and in 1930 she got into the new School of Arts and Crafts in Copenhagen. Her teacher there was the sculptor Olaf Stæhr-Nielsen, fifteen years older. They married in 1935, had two children and inspired each other for the rest of their lives.
She started at Saxbo in 1932, throwing ashtrays to other people’s models, and soon found more for her talent to do. From 1932 to 1951 she was Saxbo’s only designer, and the workshop’s serial stoneware, of high artistic quality, made it a leader in Denmark and beyond. Some pieces she kept signing EW, for Eva Wilhjelm, even after she married.
She won a gold medal at the Paris World’s Fair in 1937, an honorary diploma at the Milan Triennale in 1954 and a gold medal there in 1957, as well as prizes in Japan and the US. She exhibited at the Museum of Applied Art in Oslo in 1934 and the Danish Museum of Art & Design in 1935 and 1954. She died in Copenhagen in 1976.
- Eva Christiane Barfred Stæhr-Nielsen, born Wilhjelm
- 1911 – 1976
- Designer at Saxbo, 1932 – 1951, then working there until 1968
- Gold medal, Paris 1937; gold medal, Milan Triennale 1957
- Spaltekanden and the round teapot reissued by Spring Copenhagen, 2018
Sources:
Wikipedia (da): Eva Stæhr-Nielsen