Category: Swedish Grace

…Swedish design saga

‘Wonderful is short’, Sweden learnt in a song in the 50s. The same can be said of Sylvia Staves’ design career. At 23 she becomes lead artist at one of Sweden’s largest goldsmith suppliers, but less than ten years later she quietly walks away.

Sylvia Stave (1908-1994) is a significant and brilliant but yet a tiny bit underrecognized Swedish designer, illustrator and silversmith. During the 1930s, she created innovative silver- and metal works and pewter homeware. Elegant, geometric and streamlined works that came to place her at the forefront of industrial design and the aesthetics of the Scandinavian modernist movement.

Born Sylvia Gadd in Växjö, Sweden, 1908, she – because her parents were not married – spent the first part of her life with foster parents before she joined her mother and half-sister in Falkenberg. After spending some years with her father and stepmother she, around 1929, moved to Stockholm where she changed her last name to her mother’s remarried name Stave.
In Stockholm she attended Konstfack (the College of Arts, Crafts and Design) for some years before she became the artistic director for C.G. Hallbergs Guldsmeds AB, one of Sweden’s leading silverware companies. At the time, in 1931 she was only 23 years old. A remarkably young age for such a position, especially considering she was a woman in a male-dominated industry.

Photos: Auktionshuset Gomér & Andersson Nyköping and Crafoord Auktioner Stockholm

Form and function

Sylvia Staves’ designs were characterized by clean lines, geometric forms and functionality. In short; modernist principles but with a practical minimal elegance.
The silver plate (more seldom silver) and pewter were often mixed with other materials like brass, wood and Bakelite.

Photos: Stadsauktion Sundsvall and Stockholms Auktionsverk

Staves’ work was practical, embodying the principles of “funkis” or “functionalism”, the Scandinavian take on modernism that emphasized simplicity and utility. She frequently showcased both in Sweden and at international exhibitions. At the Paris World Fair in 1937, Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne, her designs and work received a lot of acclaim.

Paris et mon amour

After the fair Sylvia decided to stay on in Paris, applied and was admitted to the École des Beaux Arts where she studied for the next two years.
She designed a final set of products for C.G. Hallbergs in 1939 and in 1940 she married the French physician René Agid and settled down with him in Paris.
After a final series of design drawings for C. G. Hallberg’s subsidiary K Anderson in 1944-1945 she ended her professional career. She would sometimes create illustrations for books but otherwise did not return to the world of design.

Photos: Bukowskis and Uppsala Auktionskammare

Photo: Stockholms Auktionsverk

Rediscovered

For decades, her contributions were largely forgotten but finally received recognition again during the 1980s.
This, more or less entirely, thanks to the collector and Bauhaus connoisseur Rolf Walter who, after seeing a photo of one of her jugs at the Moderna Museet, resolutely tracked her down in Nice with the help of the Swedish embassy in Paris and the Swedish consulate in Toulouse. Rolf Walter then began to build a collection of Sylvia Staves’ pieces that now belongs to the collection at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm.

Photos: Bukowskis

Photos: Stockholms auktionsverk and Auktionshuset Kolonn

©SlowClapStories

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Originally published on Substack at Swedish Grace. Read the newsletter here.

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