Gunnar Nylund (1904-1997) Scandinavian, Swedish Stoneware Penguin Figurine. Cute brown and white standing bird made in the late 1930s for Rörstrand. Marked on base with their logo (an R surrounded by 3 crowns), the initials G.N., and the word Sweden. 

Condition: Commensurate with age. 

Size: 4 1/2 x 6 x 10 in. 

Gunnar Nylund was born in 1904 in Paris, where his Danish mother, the artist Fernanda Jacobsen-Nylund, and his Finland-Swedish father, the sculptor Felix Nylund, were studying. He grew up surrounded by many artists, and was encouraged to pursue multiple mediums before his teens. In 1916 the family moved to Copenhagen, then to Helsinki the following year. When the Finnish Civil War broke out in 1918 he and his mother fled to Denmark, where he studied art at boarding school. He completed an architecture internship and graduated in 1923 while privately studying ceramics, and began to study architecture at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Charlottenborg, Copenhagen. Throughout all this he was assisted regularly in his sculpture practice by his father, who especially encouraged him to study animal forms. Nylund’s first exhibited works were pieces he had done for the Bing & Gröndahl Porcelain Factory, shown at a Paris exhibition. The public response to them led to him being offered full-time employment by the company, and as a result gave up his architecture studies. There he met Paul Gauguin’s son Jean, who rapidly became his mentor, guiding him as he created several thousand unique pieces. Nylund quickly became renowned for his revolutionary stoneware in matte glazes and novel colors. After meeting the brilliant chemist Nathalie Krebs they soon started a line called Nylund & Krebs in Patrick Nordström’s workshop, which he later took over as head designer. Just prior to a major exhibition in 1930 at Bo in Copenhagen they launched SAXBO, a groundbreaking Nordic series of stark stoneware that was an early precursor to Danish Modern ideals. In 1931 the SAXBO line generated so much attention at the Svenskt Tenn Exhibition that Nylund was recruited to the Swedish porcelain manufacturer Rörstrand, and was given complete control of the company’s latest acquisition, a small factory in Lidköping that was relatively unknown at that time and which focused solely on porcelain production. Nylund’s first stonewares for them featured Song Dynasty-inspired crackelé and oxblood glazes, pieces that ranged from monumental original sculptures in chamotte and two-feet tall urns to moderately priced miniature vases and bowls. For five years he produced uninterrupted until Rörstrand entered new ownership, at which time he publicly distanced himself from the company and returned to Bing & Gröndahl. In 1937 Rörstrand’s new chief executive officer Fredrik Wehtje convinced Nylund to return with full carte blanche, and he designed numerous tableware series as well as laying the groundwork for all the factory’s 1940s collections, featuring innovative glazes. In the mid 1940s he began to devote his time to reliefs and decorating public spaces, including libraries, theaters, and churches. Most of Nylund’s stoneware sculptures ended up in Scandinavian museums, and in his later years he focused more and more on spending time with his children and composing his memoirs, delegating design and decoration tasks to new generations of artisans at Rörstrand. In 1955 he left them to become the artistic director for Strömbergshyttans Glassworks in Hovmantorp. In the early 1960s Nylund returned to Copenhagen, where he started producing stoneware for Nymölle Keramiska Fabrik in Lyngby and took freelance work for Rörstrand. His later works were more industrial and less decorative, and he retired from all outside work in 1970 to Lomma, Sweden, where he opened his own one-man workshop. For the last twenty years of life he was hailed as a living legend of Scandinavian art, and his passing in 1997 was mourned throughout Europe for his numerous contributions to pottery, design, and glasswork.

Commensurate with age.