Gunnar Nylund ~ Bear Cub

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  • Gunnar Nylund ~ Bear Cub
  • Gunnar Nylund ~ Bear Cub alternative image
  • Gunnar Nylund ~ Bear Cub alternative image
  • Gunnar Nylund ~ Bear Cub alternative image

Gunnar Nylund (1904-1997)
Ceramic Bear Cub (Björnunge)
c.1955
Produced by Rörstrand
Incised 'R (three crowns) GN SWEDEN'
H:5 x W:4 x D:3.5 ins / H:13 x W:10 x D:9 cms

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Additional Information

Gunnar Nylund was born in Paris in 1904. He was a Swedish ceramic designer known for his smooth matte glazes, beautiful muted colours and modernist shapes.

In 1907 his family moved to Copenhagen, and later to Helsinki, where Nylund attended elementary school. Nylund and his mother then moved to Denmark at the outbreak of the Finnish Civil War (1918). Following graduation in 1923 - and completing an architecture internship and studies in ceramics in Helsinki - Nylund started studying architecture at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Charlotteborg, Copenhagen.

While studying architecture, Nylund also worked at the Bing & Grondahl Porcelain factory in Copenhagen where he designed new products for an exhibition in Paris. In 1925 he accepted their offer of full time employment and abandoned his architecture studies. Working under Jean René Gauguin (son of Paul Gauguin) Nylund created a few thousand unique pieces at Bing & Gröndahl. In 1928, in collaboration with chemist Nathalie Krebs, Nylund started a ceramics workshop which (in 1930) became Saxbo Stoneware.

Nylon became artistic director (1931-1955) at Rörstrand - SwedenÂ’s oldest and most famous porcelain manufacturers. Working from their lesser known factory in Lidköping, Nylund successfully developed a technique to produce innovative matte glazed stoneware.

From 1955, he was artistic director for Strömbergshyttans glassworks in Hovmantorp. In the early 1960s, Nylund returned to Copenhagen and started producing stoneware for Nymölle Keramiska Fabrik in Lyngby. After a change of ownership at Rörstrand in the mid-1960s, he returned as a freelancer, producing a more industrial class type of stoneware.

Gunnar Nylund died in 1997, aged 93.