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Ilse Claesson
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Ilse Margareta Claesson was born on 21 March 1907 in Gothenburg. She enrolled at Slöjdföreningens skola, the school of design and crafts in her home city, in 1923 and studied there until 1928. It was a rigorous formation in both making and thinking about form, and she emerged from it with a clear eye for the relationship between shape and surface.
In 1928 she joined Rörstrand, the porcelain manufacturer that had been producing in Sweden since 1726, and she would remain there until 1936. It proved to be one of the more productive eight-year spans in Swedish ceramics of the 20th century. Claesson designed several series across functional and decorative ware, but she is known above all for two bodies of work. The Blue and White series became one of Rörstrand's commercial successes of the period. Then there was Serie V, the collection in mint green and black that has since defined her reputation. The forms are half-spherical, with a pale mint glaze applied inside and out, and hand-painted black decoration running in bands, arches, and stylised plant-like patterns across the surface. The vocabulary is confidently Art Deco: geometric but not cold, restrained but not austere.
In 1930 Claesson participated in the Stockholm Exhibition, the landmark event that placed Swedish functionalism before an international audience. That same year she and fellow ceramist Tyra Lundgren were invited as exchange artists to Arabia in Helsinki, one of Scandinavia's most technically sophisticated ceramics producers. The invitation reflected how seriously her peers regarded her work at the time.
Claesson was offered the position of artistic director at Rörstrand, a fact worth pausing on: it was not a common offer for a woman in Swedish industrial design in the early 1930s. She declined because she had started a family. The role went instead to Gunnar Nylund, who held it from 1931 to 1955. When Rörstrand relocated in 1936, she chose not to follow, and her chapter there closed.
In the years that followed she returned to Slöjdföreningens skola, now as a teacher of design. She later married Sven Roempke and began working in textile design, producing hand-printed wall hangings and runners sold by mail order under the name "Ilse-sömmen." Her ceramics were signed Claesson, IC, or I.C.; her textile work appeared under the name Roempke.
She died on 3 March 1999 in Gothenburg, at nearly 92. Works from her Rörstrand years are held in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, and her faience pieces appear regularly at Swedish and international auction houses, with top lots reaching over 6,000 SEK.