STIG LINDBERG May 29, 2021 – Jan. 30, 2022 INTRODUCTION On a beautiful spring day in the mid-1930s, the teenager Stig Lindberg bicycled straight into a birch tree. This incident would be of great significance to the man who would later become one of Sweden’s most important designers. The birch was there of course because he was born and raised in Umeå – the city of birches. The reason for his accident was that he caught sight of his future wife Gunnel Jonsson for the first time on the other side of the street. The birch tree, Gunnel and Umeå would all play a major role in the interior design of the Swedish home. Millesgården Museum proudly presents the life and works of the designer and artist Stig Lindberg. With his design and illustrations, he has provided Sweden with objects for everyday use and design since the 1940s. His enormous productivity, desire to experiment and an ability to be a functionalist without compromising his imagination has made him one of our most beloved designers. Lindberg’s main accomplishment was as art director at the Gustavsberg Porcelain Factory for two periods between 1937 and 1980. Between these two periods, Lindberg held a position as senior lecturer of ceramics at the University of Arts, Crafts and Design, where he was appointed a professor in 1970. His broad production ranges from tableware to faience and stoneware, public art, visual art and sculptures to light bulbs, sanitary ware and television sets. Lindberg found scope for his playfulness and imagination, not least, in his children’s book illustrations. His portrayal of Krakel Spektakel swinging and swaying from a curtain has left an indelible impression on many generations of children. During Stig Lindberg’s first year at the Gustavsberg Porcelain Factory, the Factory was purchased by KF (the Swedish Co-operative Union), which created economic opportunities for development and innovation in the Factory’s workshops. The motto “a more beautiful everyday life” was reinstituted – a concept that has largely shaped Swedish design history. The goal of the production was good and cheap for the masses. There was also an ambition for public education, an instruction in good taste that would ultimately give rise to good citizens. A significant part of the Gustavsberg Porcelain Factory’s revenue came from sanitary ware – sinks, bathtubs and toilets. This mass production, in turn, made it possible to open Gustavsberg Studio in 1942, where artists could engage in free creation. Post-war Sweden was a dynamic period for Lindberg and his contemporary designers and artists. They were pioneers in terms of materials, colours, patterns and innovation – not least Lindberg, who combined the ingenuity of an engineer with an artist’s aesthetic mindset and creativity. After World War II, the international market reopened, and Stig Lindberg established contacts and exhibited in both Europe and the United States. Japan, the cradle of porcelain, was also alluring and a month-long journey there culminated in inspiration in the form of designs reminiscent of bamboo and pipe shapes and not least – glazes. Lindberg was commissioned to design the gift wrap for the SEIBU department store in Tokyo, and Lindberg’s ceramics remain coveted in Japan to this day. – 2 – Millesgården has gained access to a most extensive Stig Lindberg collection through the Lindberg family. The selection has resulted in an exhibition of over 400 items, from first student pieces to his final creations; from objects never previously seen, porcelain and ceramics, art and sculpture, faience and artware, enamel and industrial design, to textiles and wallpaper. The exhibition also offers us a glimpse of Lindberg’s everyday life. Anne’s House at Millesgården has been temporarily vacated and instead we can visit Gunnel and Stig’s House. In the background, the son, Lars Dueholm-Lindberg’s personal reflections about his father can be heard. The exhibition is a collaboration with Lars Dueholm-Lindberg, Stig Lindberg’s son, who manages the legacy of his father. – 3 – A POET AMONG POTS To better understand the period in which Stig Lindberg created his works, it is relevant to take a closer look at the Home Research Institute (HFI). The Institute was founded in 1944 at the initiative of the federation of Social Democratic Women and homemaker associations across the country. Overcrowding in the cities together with functionalism were a catalyst for improving working conditions in the home. The aim was to have no more than two people living per room. Through research, the Institute also sought to rationalise household work – which was regarded mainly as women’s work. In the 1930s and 1940s, nine in ten children in Sweden had a stay- at-home mother, who needed to be trained to do housework correctly. A team of engineers, chemists, architects, sociologists and nutritionists was enlisted for this purpose. Wearing lab coats, they took notes on how far a housewife had to stretch her arm to reach the glasses or bend down to reach the tureen. Her oxygen levels were monitored to gauge energy consumption during dish-washing. The distance between the sink and the kitchen cabinets, the rubbish bin and the stove – everything was measured and standardised. Studies were carried out in private homes and at the institute’s premises behind the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Although it stemmed from a concern for and a desire to raise the status of the housewife, today this large-scale project may seem peculiar to us. An infringement on our individual freedom that today we take for granted. On the other hand, these new standards made it possible to abandon expensive, site-built kitchens and instead transition to standard size furnishings at a lower price. At housing exhibitions, new ideas about types of housing could more easily be presented. For example at the H55 in Helsingborg in 1955, which is described in more detail here in the exhibition. Municipalities were then required to conform to the new standards to be approved for state loans for housing construction. HFI became state-owned in 1957 and was renamed the Swedish Institute for Consumer Affairs, today’s Swedish Consumer Agency. The magazine HFI- Meddelanden, in which the institute published its advice and findings, is today’s Råd & Rön. Recipes, appliances and household items such as Lindberg’s oven-safe kitchen tableware Terma were then tested in the Consumer Association’s (KF) test kitchen. Anna-Britt Agnsäter was appointed head in 1946 and collaborated for many years with the Gustavsberg Porcelain Factory and the Home Research Institute. She launched Vår Kokbok in 1951, and introduced the approach of measuring ingredients by volume rather than by weight. She also introduced a set of standard measures and the meat thermometer, which can be found in virtually every kitchen in Sweden today. In addition to recipes, the cookbook, updated to this day in new editions, also contained pictures of the prepared recipes. The meals were often presented and photographed on new, modern tableware designed by Stig Lindberg. In this way, the cookbook also fulfilled a function as a marketing channel for the Gustavsberg Porcelain Factory. There were also engineers employed at the Gustavsberg Porcelain Factory. The number of tasks, the manufacturing process and the production consumption were analysed. The number of steps in the factory was streamlined, making it possible to offer lower prices at the consumer level. Everyone should be able to afford to buy beautiful, modern and practical tableware from the Gustavsberg Porcelain Factory. – 4 – This was the context in which Lindberg worked. Stig Lindberg has been called a poet in the modern Swedish home. In the midst of this rationalisation, his playfulness and Swedish surrealism contributed to something that lay beyond standardisation and laboratories. He had an ability of combining functionalism with humour and imagination in his design. Ur Ullrich, Erik (red.) (1949). Vårt vackra hem: en bok om modern heminredning. Stockholm: Lindqvist Förlag – 5 – FAIENCE The 1942 exhibition “Faience painted this spring” in the Gustavsberg boutique on Birger Jarlsgatan 2 in Stockholm was the start of an extensive faience production as well as Stig Lindberg’s breakthrough. His works were a response to a yearning for hope, spring feelings and colour during the ongoing world war. Nothing heavy, dark and brooding, no social criticism – everything blossomed. In the Gustavsberg studio, Wilhelm Kåge and Stig Lindberg painted the designs directly onto the glaze permanently, before firing. The public was ecstatic. Over the next 25 years, roughly 200 different faience models would be designed, and as this artware gained popularity, the faience workshop at Gustavsberg was expanded. The workshop, the faiencerie, was staffed with skilled painters, several of them labour immigrants; each with their own distinctive signature. Stig Lindberg’s pattern binders and sketches served as a basis, but otherwise they enjoyed a relatively large artistic freedom. To streamline production and order handling, a list of patterns and colours was produced, from which buyers could order the desired look of the item. Nearly 40 faience painters appear in the compiled list of signatures, taken from the book “Tusenkonstnären Stig Lindberg” (Prisma 2003). Today, the porcelain neighbourhood in Gustavsberg has streets named after local designers and faience painters, such as Ursula Printz street, Maja Snis street and of course, Stig Lindberg street. The faience workshop