Lisa Engqvist stoneware vase from Bing and Grøndal. appears completely flawless with a height of 20 cm. and a diameter of 13 cm.
Lisa Engqvist was born in Florence because her mother, who was the manager of the Girls' School in Nørrebro, traveled abroad to give birth to her child. Through her two uncles, the painter Gudmund Hentze and the sculptor Svend Rathsack, she came into contact with arts and crafts early on.
After finishing school, she went to a technical school and then to the School of Crafts, which had opened in 1930. Here she studied in one of the first classes and graduated in 1935. In the same year, she married architect Hans Henrik E. and together with him undertook many travels that provided great inspiration for her work.
Lisa Engqvist was employed as a ceramist from 1935-38 Nathalie Krebs at her company Saxbo, which produced mass-produced stoneware of high artistic quality. In 1938, Lisa Engqvist gave birth to her first child and for the following ten years was occupied with the family, which was increased by twins in 1943.
In 1948 she set up her own workshop in the family's home in Lyngby, and at the same time they employed a young girl to help look after the children. In the same year, Lisa Engqvist made her debut at the Artists' Autumn Exhibition, where she continued to exhibit at regular intervals. She manifested herself as one of the most significant potter talents in Denmark and worked with unique as well as series-produced earthenware.
Lisa Engqvist transformed the traditional utility ceramics into a symmetrical and also figurative language, for example the spout was shaped like a bird's or horse's head. Technically, she used a simple glaze or decoration with a combination of old techniques, which in itself was new. The result was mainly begite and glazed earthenware decorated with geometric patterns and/or small flower clusters. In the summers of 1949 and 1950, she experimented with the Japanese raku technique in a simple self-built oven on a farm in Hvalpsund in Himmerland, where the family was on holiday. Here she tested her actual medium, the decorative use of different colored settings with lead glaze, which has inspired several younger potters. 1952-54 she returned to Saxbo to carry out stoneware works for the company's jubilee exhibition in 1954 together with, among others, Edith Sonne Brown and Eva Stæhr-Nielsen .
Lisa Engqvist not only turned and decorated her works herself, but also made her own masses and settings. She used Krebs' glazes, which she had all to herself.
In the years 1965-70, Lisa Engqvist was employed at Bing & Grøndahl's Porcelænsfabrik, where she occasionally worked with stoneware, but probably did her best in porcelain. She developed models for the factory for series production of porcelain and got, among other things, produced a series of lidded jars, cans and vases in round and angular shapes with abstract organic and geometric shapes. In this work, she used a template technique with abstract, monochromatic white-grey, orange and cobalt blue patterns on a white background.
The Persian influence of the ornamentation was inspired by a study visit to Paris in 1952, where she had studied Islamic ceramics. The urge to experiment also shows itself in the graphic monotypes she produced in 1957-58. In 1966, she spent three months at Wrecclesham Pottery in Surrey, England, where she, among other things, was inspired to produce a series of freely modeled cylindrical sculptures with organic-naturalistic snail shells with dark begettings and matte glazes.
In the early 1980s, she also worked as a teacher at the Jutland Art Academy and in 1982-83 was a censor at the Artists' Autumn Exhibition, as well as writing articles about ceramic experiments in the journal Danish Crafts . In the past decade she was plagued by illness and had, among other things, trouble turning but didn't give up. She therefore worked with the clay in other ways and also made cardboard collages and cardboard sculptures, where she was concerned with light and shadow effects.
Lisa Engqvist received a large number of honors and scholarships, including Danish Handicrafts Annual Award 1958, Tagea Brandt's Travel Grant 1962 and the Bindesbøll Medal 1984.
Over the years, she participated in many exhibitions both in Denmark and abroad, e.g. Charlottenborg's Autumn Exhibition 1954-55, Charlottenborg's Spring Exhibition 1957, Formes Scandinave , Paris 1958, Small group on Den frie in the years 1959-69, Ceramics and Textiles , 1971, The Arts of Denmark , New York 1960, Nordic ceramics , Lund 1962, as well Keramiske Veje , 1985, 1987 and 1989. She also held a number of solo exhibitions. After her death, a memorial exhibition was shown in 1990 at the Århus Art Academy.
