KunstenaarSwedish
Gocken Jobs
1 actieve items
Gocken Jobs was born Hanna Ingrid Elisabet Jobs on 7 September 1914 in Stora Kopparbergs parish, Falun. She was the youngest child of music director Anders Jobs and his wife Elisabet Wisén-Jobs and received the pet-name Gocken, a corruption of dockan (the doll), which she kept throughout her life.
She trained as a ceramicist at Tekniska skolan in Stockholm, today Konstfack, studying from 1931 to 1935. After graduating she joined the ceramics workshop of her older sister Lisbet Jobs at Bergsund in Stockholm. The sisters collaborated closely, with Gocken developing a characteristic vocabulary of densely observed botanical motifs drawn from garden and forest flora.
In 1943 Lisbet moved to Västanvik in Leksands parish, Dalarna, and had a workshop and kiln built there. Gocken built a house on the same property and lived there until her death. The wartime shortage of ceramic glazes pushed the sisters toward textile design. The stylist Astrid Sampe encouraged them to transfer their ceramic motifs to fabric, and the NK textile chamber began printing their designs at Ljungberg's in Floda.
In 1944 their brother Peer Jobs established Jobs Handtryck, a hand-printing studio at the Västanvik property. The first large public presentation came in 1945 at NK Stockholm, with the exhibition När skönheten kom till byn (When Beauty Came to the Village), which launched eighteen so-called Jobstryck patterns and marked the beginning of a broader Scandinavian awareness of the sisters' work. Gocken ultimately designed around 45 patterns for metered textile, including enduring classics such as Trollslända (1945), Ros och lilja (1946), Stugrabatt (1951), Granatäpple (1961), Sommar (1964) and Rabarber (1968).
The patterns are defined by hand-painted lines and loose, organic forms that retain the quality of botanical drawing while avoiding strict symmetry. Her work was collected by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and her archive of sketches, textiles and ceramics has been held at Nationalmuseum in Stockholm since 2009.
Gocken Jobs died on 26 December 1995 in Västanvik, Leksand. Jobs Handtryck continues to produce her patterns from the original Leksand premises.
On Auctionist she has 32 items catalogued across Textiles, Carpets & Textiles and Miscellaneous categories, with 5 currently active. Her work circulates through regional Swedish houses including Karlstad Hammarö Auktionsverk and Hälsinglands Auktionsverk, as well as Stockholms Auktionsverk. Prices are typically moderate, with a brickbord table in her Granatäpple pattern achieving the top recorded sale of 1,400 SEK.