Grete Prytz Kittelsen

After completing her examen artium in 1935, she studied goldsmithing at the National Academy of Art, Crafts and Design, earning her diploma in 1941. She then deepened her training abroad, attending the Institute of Design in Chicago on a Fulbright scholarship - an experience that introduced her to postwar American functionalism and sharpened her thinking about how industrial methods could serve jewelry design without sacrificing material quality.

Back in Oslo, she joined J. Tostrup and set about renewing its product range in collaboration with the architect Arne Korsmo, whom she married in April 1945. The two formed one of the more productive designer-architect partnerships of the postwar Nordic scene. Together they pushed enamel work toward a lighter, more contemporary sensibility: informal silver jewelry with vitreous enamel in colors that felt at home alongside modernist interiors. Kittelsen worked with the Central Institute for Industrial Research to develop new techniques for decorating silver with enamel, finding methods that allowed greater precision and more vivid color than traditional approaches.

From the late 1950s, she extended her practice to Cathrineholm, a factory in Halden, where she became design consultant. There, working alongside the Hadeland Glass Factory, she developed a range of enamelled steel objects - bowls, trays, pots - that became a fixture in Scandinavian kitchens and dining rooms. The pieces were practical, affordable, and formally coherent, combining industrial production with careful color thinking. The Lotus series and related enamelware from this period remain widely collected.

Kittelsen was central to Norway's engagement with the Triennale di Milano. At her initiative, Norway exhibited at the Triennale for the first time in 1954, and she was awarded a Grand Prix for a large tray in enamelled silver - a recognition that placed her firmly within the European postwar design conversation. The Lunning Prize followed in 1952, one of the most significant design honors in Scandinavia at the time.

On the Auctionist platform, Kittelsen's work appears primarily through Grev Wedels Plass Auksjoner in Norway, which handles the majority of the 19 items catalogued under her name. Recorded sales include a bolle (bowl) at 27,000 NOK, a vase at 18,000 NOK, and a sigarettboks (cigarette box) at 16,000 NOK - figures that reflect steady collector interest in her silver and enamel pieces. The items are classified under Art and Silver & Metals, consistent with the dual nature of her practice as both a fine applied artist and a designer of domestic metalwork.