A small Saxbo vase in Room 140 of the V&A, 15 cm high, has relief decoration under a mottled blue and brown glaze and the workshop’s yin-yang mark pressed into the base. Eva Stæhr-Nielsen designed the form; Nathalie Krebs did the glaze. It was shown in the V&A’s Scandinavia at Table exhibition in 1951. Krebs was Saxbo’s director and glaze master, and her stated aim was “pure colours, simple forms, honest craftsmanship and sound technique”.
She was born Johanne Nathalie Krebs in Aarhus in 1895, the sister of the doctor and explorer Carl Krebs. From 1919 to 1929 she worked at Bing & Grøndahl, where she met the ceramicist Gunnar Nylund. In 1929 the two founded Nylund & Krebs, renting the potter Patrick Nordström’s workshop in Islev, and the following year they showed at Bo in Copenhagen, at Svenskt Tenn in Stockholm and in Helsinki.
When Nylund became artistic director at Rörstrand in 1931, Krebs carried on alone as Saxbo Stentøj in Gladsaxe. She experimented with copper and iron glazes on simple stoneware forms, in greens, blues, browns, yellows and whites, and the results gave her an international name. From 1932 Eva Stæhr-Nielsen designed most of the forms, among them Spaltekanden, the slit jug that became the emblem of Saxbo, and Krebs also worked with Edith Sonne Bruun and, for periods, Lisa Engqvist. The vases, jars and bowls were made for ordinary Danish homes, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the V&A and Nationalmuseum in Stockholm all acquired them. Saxbo closed in 1968.
She received the Tagea Brandt travel grant in 1937 and the Prince Eugen Medal in 1951. She died in Copenhagen in 1978. In 2026 the ceramics museum CLAY in Middelfart opened SAXBO – Stoneware for the People, built on a gift of 104 pieces from a Danish private collection.
- Johanne Nathalie Krebs
- 1895 – 1978
- Bing & Grøndahl, 1919 – 1929
- Co-founder of Nylund & Krebs, 1929; founder and glaze master of Saxbo, which closed in 1968
- Prince Eugen Medal, 1951
- Work in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the V&A, Nationalmuseum and CLAY
Sources:
Dansk Kvindebiografisk Leksikon: Nathalie Krebs
CLAY Keramikmuseum: SAXBO – Stoneware for the People
Read next: Eva Stæhr-Nielsen, who designed most of Saxbo’s forms for Krebs’ glazes, Signe Persson-Melin, who later designed for Saxbo, and Nanna Ditzel, another Danish modernist. All Saxbo designers are here.
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