Gunnar Nylund 1904-1989

Born in Paris, Gunnar Nylund was the son of a Finnish father, an Artist, and a Danish mother who was a Ceramicist. During the course of his training and professional career he worked in both Danish and Swedish companies designing ceramics and glass.

It is not surprising that he worked in many differing styles and is credited with the Twentieth Century renaissance of the Rostrand Company. During the thirties Nylund designed subtle, graceful, classic designs as well as cleanly designed modernist pieces. Also during that period, he created numerous sculptural pieces in a rough charmotte ware. His work gradually became more abstract and asymmetric after the war

He was trained as an architect in Denmark between 1923-1925. He began work for Bing and Grondahl porcelain factory from 1926-1928. It was there that he met Natalie Krebs with whom; in 1929 he opened a studio. A year later Nylund left the studio to become a designer at the Rostrand Pottery in Sweden. Krebs stayed on. She re-named their studio Saxbo. In 1931 he was appointed senior designer of Rostrand. With the exception of 1937-1938, when he became artistic director of the Bing and Grondahl factory in Denmark, Nylund remained at Rostrand until 1958. He is considered one of their most important designers, working in styles ranging from the functional to the most abstract. In addition to his work for Rostrand he was artistic director at Stromberghyttan, a glass factory in Sweden from 1954Ð1957. In 1959 Nylund returned to Denmark to become the art director of the Nymolle pottery. He left Nymolle in 1963, to work freelance for both Rostrand and for Stromberghyttan. In 1971 he established his own design studio, Designia in Malmo Sweden, where he continued to concentrate on glass designs as well as metal. One of the metal commissions he made at Malmo was a sculpture for the town square at Lidkoping.