KunstenaarSwedish
Claes Thell
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Claes Thell was born in 1943 in Väsby, just outside Höganäs on the northwest coast of Skåne, a town whose identity has long been shaped by its clay and ceramic industries. He began working with clay at the age of fifteen, drawn into the material well before any formal training, experimenting with glazes on his own terms. This early, self-directed engagement with the chemistry of fired surfaces would define the direction of his work for the next six decades.
After school he spent three years at Höganäs Metallurgical Laboratory, gaining systematic knowledge of glaze technology - the behaviour of iron oxides, the conditions for reduction firing, the relationship between clay body and surface coating. This was an unusual route into craft ceramics, grounding his practice in material science rather than art school convention. He then established his own workshop in Ödråka, and later moved to Strandbaden, Höganäs, where he continued working until his final years.
In the 1970s, Thell became part of a loose collective of Höganäs-based ceramicists, forming the group Keramikerna i Höganäs together with Henning Nilsson, Yngve Blixt, Brita Mellander-Jungermann, Ann Jansson, and his brother Bo Thell. The group organised joint exhibitions at venues across Sweden and ran their own exhibition gallery in Höganäs, giving the regional ceramic scene a more visible platform. Within this context Thell developed a recognisable approach: strong, elemental forms - floor vases, wall sculptures, vessels inspired by the rocky Skåne coastline - covered in glazes that reward close looking.
His sustained interest in East Asian glaze traditions became more direct after a trip to Korea in 1991, which deepened his engagement with jun (the opalescent blue-grey glaze of Song dynasty porcelain) and temmoku (the iron-saturated black-brown glaze associated with Fujian kilns). He mixed iron powder directly into his stoneware bodies as well as his glazes, and explored the effects of uranium, zinc, and other metallic oxides. Many of his pieces were unique objects, produced in single copies, making them closer in character to sculpture than to craft production.
Thell exhibited at the Östasiatiska museet (Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities) in Stockholm, Konsthantverkarna, Vejens Kunstmuseum in Denmark, and Lolland-Falsters Kunstmuseum. In 2006 he was among four Höganäs ceramicists selected for the Royal Coin Cabinet's exhibition "Höganäs, inte bara krus" (Höganäs, not just jugs) in Stockholm. His work is represented in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm. He died in 2019.
On the secondary market, Thell's ceramics appear regularly at auction houses in southern Sweden, particularly Höganäs Auktionsverk and Helsingborgs Auktionskammare, which together account for the majority of his 36 recorded works in the Auctionist database. Top results include a pair of stoneware vases at SEK 5,600, a single floor vase at SEK 5,000, and a glazed stoneware floor vase that achieved EUR 4,055. Sculptures in ceramic on wooden bases also appear in the market. Price levels reflect the collectors' market for post-war Swedish studio ceramics rather than fine art valuations.