Gutte Eriksen

Gudrum "Gutte" Agnete Tryde Eriksen (20 November 1918 – 8 July 2008) was a Danish ceramist whose works were influenced by the years she spent in Japan studying Asian techniques. It is above all the specially produced glaze which is the distinguishing feature of her undecorated pottery. As a result of both her work and her teaching, she has exerted considerable influence on Danish potters.

Biography Born in Rødby on 20 November 1918, Gudrum Agnete Tryde Eriksen was the daughter of the parish priest Erik Eriksen (1870–1947) and Louise Tryde (1876–1966). From 1936, she attended the School of Arts and Crafts where she specialized in ceramics, graduating in 1939. While still studying, she exhibited at the Charlottenborg autumn exhibition in 1938, inspired by old artefacts she had seen in the National Museum.

The demand for ceramics during the Second World War encouraged production in the early 1940s and thereafter. Eriksen first collaborated with Åse Feilberg and Christian Frederiksen in Hareskov before establishing her own workshop in Kastrup in 1942. That year she also successfully exhibited in Stockholm in the Dansk Kunsthaandværk (Danish Craftmanship) show organized by Mogens Koch. When the exhibition came to Copenhagen's Danish Design Museum, she sold a piece titled Søpindsvinet (The Sea Urchin) to the museum. She then went to France where she visited the potters Vassil Ivanoff in La Borne, a hamlet in Henrichemont, and Eugène Lion in Saint-Amand-en-Puisaye. The glaze consisted of a combination of borax, quartz, clay and ash.

In the early 1970s, Eriksen travelled to central Japan on several occasions, once again meeting Bernard Leach and studying Korean techniques which inspired her later work.

Personal life In 1951, Eriksen married the painter Preben Hansen with whom she had two children, a daughter and a son.