ArtistSwedish
Tage Göthlin
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Tage Göthlin was a Swedish designer who worked primarily in silver and pewter, and whose name is inseparable from TESI - Tenn and Silver AB, a Gothenburg workshop that operated from 1944 to 1982. His designs for TESI span roughly four decades, from the streamlined cocktail shakers of the late 1930s and 1940s through to relief-decorated vases and candlesticks from the 1960s. The body of work he produced there represents one of the more sustained collaborations between an individual designer and a regional Swedish silversmith in the mid-twentieth century.
Gothlin's earliest known pieces for TESI reflect the aesthetic vocabulary of Swedish Grace and the Art Deco movement that shaped Scandinavian applied arts in the interwar years. His cocktail shakers from this period are compact, architectural objects with clean geometric profiles, sometimes featuring cut-out detailing and a restrained elegance that avoids excessive ornament. The forms have aged well and are now collected internationally. A 1930s shaker in nickel silver demonstrates how closely his early work tracked the modernist current without losing the crafted warmth that distinguishes Swedish metalwork of this period.
Through the 1940s and 1950s his range broadened considerably. Sterling silver goblets with engraved decoration, pairs of candlesticks with cabochon-set amethysts, and silver vases with relief motifs of flowers and leaves all carry his maker's stamp alongside the TESI mark and Gothenburg hallmarks. The amethyst-set pieces in particular have become sought-after examples of mid-century Swedish silversmithing, combining formal clarity with a note of decorative richness. A 1957 pair of sterling candlesticks with amethyst stones is among the most frequently cited examples of his mature style. He continued producing for TESI into the 1960s, with hallmarked pieces from 1961, 1963, 1965, and 1966 all present in auction records.
Gothlin also designed in pewter, though those pieces are rarer. A 1967 pewter vase decorated with hand-chased flowers and leaves demonstrates his ability to work with the softer medium while maintaining the same careful attention to surface and form that characterizes his silver work. The relative scarcity of TESI pewter compared to silver has made those pieces particularly notable among collectors of Scandinavian applied arts.
On the Auctionist platform, Göthlin is represented by 13 items, all in the Silver and Metals category. The pieces in our database span hallmark dates from 1948 to 1966 and include goblets, shakers, vases, candlesticks, and a pokal. Auction houses handling his work include Helsingborgs Auktionskammare, Crafoord Auktioner Lund, Goransauktioner, and Bukowskis. The top recorded sale in our database reached 2,622 EUR for a sterling silver goblet with engraved decoration at Helsingborgs Auktionskammare. Prices across the database range from under 400 SEK to that EUR figure, reflecting the wide variation in form, size, material, and condition typical of a designer whose output covered both functional table silver and more formal presentation pieces.