Bertil Persson ( ja, ベアティル・ペアソン; born 1940) is a Swedish
Hagi ware potter based in Japan.
Biography
Persson graduated from
Skånska målarskolan in
Malmö in 1958 and was employed by
Royal Copenhagen in
Denmark the same year, where he worked with painting sets of the company's
Flora Danica
''Flora Danica'' is a comprehensive atlas of botany from the Age of Enlightenment, containing folio-sized pictures of all the wild plants native to Denmark, in the period from 1761 to 1883.
History
''Flora Danica'' was proposed by G. C. Oede ...
porcelain dining set.
After a company-sponsored trip to various locales in Japan to study
Japanese pottery and porcelain in 1969, Persson decided to give up
porcelain painting
China painting, or porcelain painting, is the decoration of glazed porcelain objects such as plates, bowls, vases or statues. The body of the object may be hard-paste porcelain, developed in China in the 7th or 8th century, or soft-paste porcel ...
and become a potter. After the master of one of the kilns he had visited in Hagi reluctantly agreed to accept him as an apprentice, he moved to Hagi in 1970 and underwent a 7-year apprenticeship, before eventually setting up his own kiln named Nanmyōjigama (, ) in
Hagi, Yamaguchi where he also lives.
In the beginning, Persson made traditional Hagi ware as tradition dictated but he gradually began experimenting with painting his pottery and by time, this became his trademark. He has become especially known for his painted ceramic plates, mainly with wild flower motives, which he himself refers to as "e-Hagi" (, "painted Hagi (ware)").
In 2002, he was awarded a "Distinguished Cultural Services Award" (, ) by Hagi city.
has described him as "one of the most popular artists of Hagi ware"
while the
Yamaguchi Shimbun remarked he has many (domestic) admirers.
References
External links
Official website (in Japanese)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Persson, Bertil
1940 births
Japanese potters
Living people
People from Malmö
Swedish emigrants to Japan