Kaj Franck

Professor Kaj Franck was born in 1911 and grew up in a world were richly decorated, multiple-part porcelain dinner sets were the norm. At the other end of the spectrum were poor households, where all members of the family ate from the same stone dish. During his remarkable career, Franck steered a mid-course between these extremes, changing our collective perception of tableware in the process.

“The point of reference for my design was therefore the basic idea rather than design.” explained Kaj.

Image courtesy of Temporary Addorisio

Kaj Franck created the Kilta series piece by piece in the 1950s. This represented an excursion into the essential. Kaj’s original im­pressions of the prevalent style are as follows: “It is easy to imagine what the Arabia as sortment looked like: copies of Swedish models, which had been fashioned after English and French dishes. Of course, these included inimitable, individually flawless and practical items. But on the whole, the collection was unexcitingly superficial and coarse, despite imitating models from Wedgwood, Paris or Leipzig.”

Image courtesy of Apartment Therapy

Abolishing the existing tableware concept was not easy, because excess decoration often served to conceal faults in the material or defective shapes. When he created Kilta, Franck was Head of Applied Arts at Arabia. He co-operated actively with experts at the factory to achieve beautiful, perfectly unicoloured coatings. These in themselves were decoration enough. Without this teamwork, the Kilta series (1952) and its successor, Teema (1981), would never have seen the light of day.

Image courtesy of tippleandsnack at Etsy