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	Thorvald Bindesbøll: Vase 1906
	Thorvald Bindesbøll: Vase. 1906 Height: 30.5 cm MKH 14925. Purchased 1952   Thorvald Bindesbøll (1846-1908) was trained as an architect, but only designed a few buildings that were actually constructed. Rather, he earned his prominent position in the history of Danish art as a ceramic artist and, later, as a designer of silverware.   Bindesbøll first took an interest in ceramics in 1880. In the period up until 1906, he produced several hundred ceramic works and developed his own distinctive style. Bindesbøll was not a potter himself. The majority of his ceramic works were turned by professional potters, on the basis of his instructions or working drawings, after which Bindesbøll decorated the wet clay himself and added the glaze. Bindesbøll made his first attempts at work of this kind in 1880 at Frauens Lervarefabrik, where he was accompanied by his friend the architect Andreas Clemmensen. He then moved to the workshops of Johan Wallmann (from 1883 to 1891), where he worked with a group of artist friends. Bindesbøll spent the summers of 1890 and 1891 with Kähler in Næstved, after which he worked exclusively with Københavns Lervarefabrik, which had been taken over by Wallmann's head craftsman, G. Eifrig.   In 1904, however, Bindesbøll sent a brief message to his friend and student Svend Hammershøi: “You take care of the pots. I'm not coming back.” With this, Bindesbøll made a dramatic break with ceramics, which he left entirely to Hammershøi. This break coincided with a new acquaintance and collaborative relationship with the silversmith Holger Kyster in Kolding. The break with ceramics did not turn out to be as definitive as it seemed at first, however. In 1906, Bindesbøll returned to Eifrig in Valby for a short time and produced two works that are now housed at Museet på Koldinghus.   The piece shown here features a rounded body that is broadest at the top, and has a low, smooth brim. There is black glaze at the top, but this fades to brown below. On top of the glaze is a decoration featuring blue waves with applied white foam. Nowhere in his entire artistic production does Bindesbøll come closer to his Japanese inspiration. It is difficult to interpret the wave as anything other than a depiction of the Great Wave at Kanagawa, which the Japanese artist Hokusai (1760-1849) frequently used to frame his woodcut depictions of the Mt. Fuji volcano.