‘One Must Offer "Something for Everyone" ’: Designing Crockery for Consumer Consent in 1950s’ Norway
Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Ideas and Art, University of Oslo
kjetil.fallan{at}ifikk.uio.no
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Abstract |
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‘One must offer "something for everyone".’ These words belong to Ragnar Grimsrud, ceramic designer and general manager of the Norwegian earthenware factory Figgjo, when he in 1955 was called upon to offer the manufacturer's view on design management and design strategy in Norway's leading design magazine Bonytt.
That an art school-trained designer fostered on the avant-garde modernism of the interwar period could make such concessions to the perceived public taste must be understood in a broader economic context. In 1950s Norway, after the frantic demand of the first postwar years had cooled off and before international free trade completely changed the playing field, tariff barriers and structural disparities made it difficult to establish viable exports for the manufactured goods industry, resulting in dependence on a small and heterogeneous domestic market.
For an industrial enterprise relying on volume production, this situation posed serious challenges. If Figgjo were to survive, it had to design products that would appeal to the world outside the design community everyday things for common people whose affinity towards and allegiance to modern design was far from given.
This article investigates this flip side to the elitist, refined, craft-based products normally associated with the mythological phenomenon branded ‘Scandinavian Design’ that reached its zenith in the mid-1950s epitomized by the exhibition Design in Scandinavia that toured art museums in the USA and Canada from 1954 to 1957 to great critical acclaim. Although Figgjo was represented at the exhibition, its daily dealings in design strategy and practice had an entirely different focus: Doing business in an increasingly difficult domestic market.
Key Words: ceramics industry • FiggjoNorway • Taste • industrial design • traditionalesque design