ArtistDanish
Michael Andersen
7 active items
On the Baltic island of Bornholm, Jens Michael Andersen founded his ceramic workshop in Rønne in 1890, taking over a site with roots stretching back to 1773. Trained under the respected ceramist Lauritz Hjorth, he built a production centred on kitchenware, figurines, vases and jars that drew from both ancient Greek and Nordic decorative traditions. The business bore his name from the start, and it was his sons who would transform it into one of Denmark's most technically accomplished ceramic houses.
Of the four sons who joined the workshop, Daniel Folkmann Andersen (1885-1959) had the greatest artistic impact. By his mid-twenties he was reshaping the factory's output around the new Art Nouveau style, introducing vases with sinuous floral and animal decorations alongside richly layered, multi-coloured glazes. In 1916 the company formally became Michael Andersen & Son when Emil Folkmann Andersen was made a partner. The defining technical achievement came in 1935, when Daniel won a gold medal at the World Exhibition in Brussels for a new glazing method he called the Persia technique - a crackle finish of extraordinary visual complexity that would remain the company's signature for decades.
The postwar period brought a new creative force: German ceramist Marianne Starck (1938-2007), who joined as art director in 1955 and stayed until the company changed hands in 1993. Under her direction the workshop shifted toward Scandinavian functionalist stoneware while continuing to deploy the Persia glaze on table lamps, bowls and decorative vessels that have since become some of the most sought-after Danish mid-century pieces on the secondary market. Starck's designs, marked with her initials alongside the MA&S stamp, are now the works most consistently attributed to the Michael Andersen name at auction.
Bornholm's ceramic tradition - anchored by Michael Andersen, Søholm and Hjorth - gave the island an international profile that persisted well after industrial production declined. The workshop passed to ceramist Solveig Ussing in 1993 and continues in smaller form today. Collectors prize the Art Deco period glazeware of the 1930s and the Starck-designed stoneware of the 1950s and 1960s above all.
At auction, Michael Andersen pieces appear regularly across Scandinavian and German sale rooms. On Auctionist, 20 items are recorded spanning ceramics and decorative objects including elephant and monkey figurines, table lamps with the characteristic crackle finish, earthenware bowls with crystal glazes, and wall-mounted relief pieces. Top houses handling the work include Woxholt Auktioner, Kunst- und Auktionshaus Kleinhenz and Helsingborgs Auktionskammare. The highest recorded sale on the platform reached 1,004 SEK for a botanical-relief table lamp, reflecting the modest but steady collector interest in secondary market examples.