Friedl Kjellberg ( Holzer, from 1932 Holzer-Kjellberg; 24 October 1905 — 11 September 1993) was an

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ceramicist Ceramic art is art made from ceramic materials, including clay. It may take forms including artistic pottery, including tableware, tiles, figurines and other sculpture. As one of the plastic arts, ceramic art is one of the visual arts. Wh ...

, noted especially for her work with the so-called 'rice grain' method of

porcelain Porcelain () is a ceramic material made by heating substances, generally including materials such as kaolinite, in a kiln to temperatures between . The strength and translucence of porcelain, relative to other types of pottery, arises main ...

-making.

Career

Friedl Holzer studied art and design in her native Austria, at the ''Kunstgewerbeschule'' design school in Graz, and upon graduating was offered a position as a designer at the

Arabia The Arabian Peninsula, (; ar, شِبْهُ الْجَزِيرَةِ الْعَرَبِيَّة, , "Arabian Peninsula" or , , "Island of the Arabs") or Arabia, is a peninsula of Western Asia, situated northeast of Africa on the Arabian Plat ...

ceramics manufacturer in

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, Finland. She joined the company in 1924, and stayed there her entire career, until her retirement 46 years later in 1971. In 1932, Friedl Holzer married her colleague at Arabia, engineer Erik Kjellberg, and was thereafter alternately known both as Friedl Kjellberg and Holzer-Kjellberg. Kjellberg's design style has been characterised as 'modern classicism'; based on tradition, but tempered by clean simplicity. She is known to have been inspired and influenced throughout her life by the methods and shapes of

Chinese ceramics Chinese ceramics show a continuous development since Chinese Neolithic, pre-dynastic times and are one of the most significant forms of Chinese art and ceramics globally. The first pottery was made during the List of Palaeolithic sites in China, ...

. In contrast to her delicate 'rice grain porcelain' designs (see next section), many of her later works make use of bold designs and striking colours, such as blood red and turquoise, achieved using special glazes and firing techniques.

Rice grain porcelain

Kjellberg is perhaps best known for her rice grain porcelain, a method she first discovered during a 1931 study trip to

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: a 17th-century Chinese dish on display at the Museum of Applied Arts had been decorated in this manner, inspiring her to experiment with the technique. By this method, small oblong holes are cut in the ceramic object prior to glazing; the glaze fills the hole, thus creating a

translucent In the field of optics, transparency (also called pellucidity or diaphaneity) is the physical property of allowing light to pass through the material without appreciable scattering of light. On a macroscopic scale (one in which the dimensions ...

area reminiscent of a grain of rice. Kjellberg worked for 11 years developing the method, before launching her first collection in 1942. It was an instant success, despite the high price due to the labour-intensive and time-consuming production method, and her rice grain porcelain designs remained in the Arabia product range until 1974. She felt burdened to some extent by the popularity of her rice grain works and under pressure to create yet more designs using the method, when she herself was keen to move to new ideas and experiments. Kjellberg's rice grain designs were a notable success story of the Finnish 1940s and 1950s industrial design, and have left a lasting legacy.

Recognition

Exhibitions

Kjellberg's designs were shown at the International Expositions in Barcelona (1929), Brussels (1935) and Paris (1937).

Collections

Besides Arabia's own design museum in Helsinki, Kjellberg's works are included in the permanent collections of the ''

Universalmuseum Joanneum The Universalmuseum Joanneum is a multidisciplinary museum with buildings in several locations in the province of Styria, Austria. It has galleries and collections in many subject areas including archaeology, geology, paleontology, mineralogy, b ...

'' in Graz, the

Museum of Design, Zürich The Museum of Design, Zürich (German: ''Museum für Gestaltung Zürich'') is a museum for industrial design, visual communication, architecture, and craft in Zurich, Switzerland. Overview The museum is part of the Department of Cultural An ...

and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, as well as several museums in Scandinavia and Germany. Her ''Helmi'' (1969) ( 'Pearl') rice grain porcelain set (cup, saucer, side plate and creamer) is included in the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

collection.

Awards and honours

Kjellberg won a silver medal at the 5th Milan Triennial (1933), and gold at the 10th edition (1954), as well as silver at Cannes (1955). In 1962, she was awarded the ' medal of the

Order of the Lion of Finland The Order of the Lion of Finland ( fi, Suomen Leijonan ritarikunta; sv, Finlands Lejons orden) is one of three official orders in Finland, along with the Order of the Cross of Liberty and the Order of the White Rose of Finland. The President ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kjellberg, Friedl 1905 births 1993 deaths People from Leoben Finnish ceramists Austrian ceramists Women ceramists 20th-century ceramists Pro Finlandia Medals of the Order of the Lion of Finland Austrian emigrants to Finland