Carl Harry Stålhane

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Carl Harry Stålhane, 1920-1990, ceramicist

Training:
Painting with Isaac Grunewald, Stockholm; Academie Colarossi, Paris with Ossip Zadkine
Career:
1939-73 Rorstrand
1963-1971 SAC Gothenburg (senior ceramics tutor)
1973 – Freelance at Bing & Grøndahl
1973 – 1980s Designhuset (own studio), Lidkoping
Awards:
1951 Milan Triennale Gold medal
1954 Milan Triennale Diplôme d’honneur
Collections:
National Museum, Stockholm, Industrial Arts Museum in Copenhagen, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

- Scandinavia: Ceramics and Glass in the 20^th Century by Jennifer Opie, Victoria and Albert Museum 1989

Stalhane trained as a painter and sculptor in Stockholm and Paris, respectively. Hired at the age of nineteen by the Rorstrand porcelain factory to paint earthenware, it was not long before he was promoted to art director and chief designer for the firm. In the late 1940s he first attracted international attention with his designs for slender, symmetrical vessels in matte, monochromatic glazes, inspired by ancient Chinese ceramics from the Sung period. He continued to design these graceful pieces, along with several lines of dinnerware for factory production, through the 1950s, winning the Milan Triennale gold medal in 1954. By the early 1960s, however, his interests had shifted to larger, more rugged forms, often hand-built, with incised decoration and thickly-applied, viscous glazes. From 1963 to 1971, while continuing to work for Rorstrand, he served as senior ceramics instructor at the School of Arts and Crafts in Goteborg. His long and artistically productive career at Rorstrand came to a close in 1973, when he left to open his own workshop, Designhuset, with the assistance of Kent Ericsson. Stalhane did not throw his own pots - rather, he drew designs for forms, then closely supervised expert potters who worked from his sketches. Incised and applied decoration, as well as hand-built and sculptural forms, were executed by Stalhane personally.