ArtistSwedish
Erik Mornils
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Erik Mornils was born in 1900 in Rättvik, Dalarna, in the heart of a region with deep roots in Swedish folk craft. His path to ceramics began informally: as a young man he started painting and decorating flower pots at the Nittsjö factory in his spare time, and by 1925 he had been taken on full-time as a decorator. That early, unhurried apprenticeship shaped the approach he would carry throughout his career - close attention to surface, glaze, and the quiet visual language of Swedish rural tradition.
Although his official title was decorator, Mornils gradually took on the full range of a designer's work at Nittsjö, developing forms as well as surface treatments. He collaborated closely with potters Karl Johan Forsell and later P.J. Wahlund, contributing molds and models that gave Nittsjö's output a distinctive coherence. His most enduring contribution came in 1932 when he designed the 'Allmoge' series - a complete dinnerware range whose clean profiles and folk-derived ornament distilled the spirit of Dalarna into functional, everyday objects. The name itself, meaning roughly 'common folk' or 'peasantry', was a deliberate reference to the vernacular craft traditions that surrounded the factory.
Mornils worked through the Art Deco period and absorbed some of its formal geometry into his vase and vessel forms, producing spherical and ovoid shapes with richly coloured glazes - deep greens, ochres, and earth tones that carried the palette of the Dalarna landscape. Nittsjö exhibited at the major Swedish craft exhibitions of the late 1920s and early 1930s, receiving a bronze medal at the 1927 Falun crafts exhibition and a silver medal at Sundsvall in 1928, and showing work at the landmark Stockholm Exhibition of 1930. These appearances placed Nittsjö alongside the leading Swedish applied arts institutions of the interwar period, and Mornils was central to what the factory presented.
He remained at Nittsjö until 1967, a tenure of over forty years. The 'Allmoge' series outlasted his time there and is still produced by the factory today, making it one of the longest-running continuous ceramic designs in Sweden. Mornils died in 1974.
On the secondary market, his work circulates primarily through Swedish regional auction houses including Formstad Auktioner, Handelslagret Auktionsservice, and Olsens Auktioner, as well as through Bukowskis. Auctionist currently holds 13 items attributed to him, spanning vases, bowls, table lamps, and service sets in stoneware and earthenware from Nittsjö. Prices for individual pieces typically range from a few hundred to around 1,000 SEK, with larger or more distinctive works - including a table lamp that achieved 1,000 EUR - reaching higher. His ceramics also appear on the international design market through platforms such as 1stDibs and Pamono, where the 1930s Art Deco pieces attract consistent collector interest.