Wilhelm Kåge

The Collection of Hjalmar Olson (1902-1990), Gustavsberg.
Hjalmar Olson was president of Gustavsberg Porcelain Factory 1937-1968, and a Vice Chairman of LKAB 1962-1973. He was elected in 1942 as a member of the Academy of Engineering Sciences, where he was 2nd Vice Chairman from 1954 to 1956, and was appointed as the first honorary member in 1963. He received his degree in 1962 honorary doctor of technology at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
As an engineer he studied modern porcelain industry in Germany. This took him to Gustavsberg porcelain factory already in 1929.
With his great interest in art and craft, he built up a private collection where quality was always of utmost importance. With help from close friends like Estrid Ericson, owner of Svenskt Tenn, he created his collection during the middle of the 1900's.

Wilhelm Kåge was a Swedish artist, painter, and ceramicist. Between 1917 and 1949, he worked as artistic director at Gustavsberg porcelain factory.

Kåge studied at Valand konstskola in Gothenburg and later in Copenhagen, where he got to know artist Gösta Adrian-Nilsson (GAN) and became familiar with modern art. He studied graphic art in Munich and began his artistic career by designing posters for theaters and exhibitions. When Gustavsberg needed new products for the home Exhibition at Liljevalch in 1917, Kåge was hired. He developed 30 different tableware, colorful faience, stoneware, and series such as Carrara, Surrea, and Våga. In 1942, Kåge developed Gustavsberg's studio together with designer Stig Lindberg. The studio became an aesthetic laboratory for objets d'art.

At the Stockholm Exhibition in 1930, Kåge presented Gustavsberg's future sales success "Argenta", a series of objet d'art glazed mainly in green but also in red, blue, brown, and celadon green and painted with various silver decorations according to Kåge's sketches.