Carina Seth Andersson on functional forms

With a small studio production of glass and ceramics, as well as commissions for producers like Svenskt Tenn, Iittala, and Marimekko, Carina Seth Andersson aims to transcend the traditional hierarchy of arts, crafts, and the mass-produced.

She considers her materials to be living and organic, and therefore, they demand the human hand and sense to transition from liquid to solid form, even if made industrially. Objects of glass or ceramics will never be entirely uniform, she believes, but slightly varying, reflecting the hand’s work and craft.

For Andersson, using utility design as the starting point means returning again and again to an object’s principal function. Rather than sketching and experimenting with the material, she begins working with words, listing needs and end uses, cutting and pasting and attributing them to a certain object or form. She draws inspiration from the simple, archetypal shapes that have evolved over time as solutions to everyday problems.

In her work, traditional utility designs also serve as examples of how functional form is achieved, by studying the proportions and balance between an object’s components.

For ARKET’s first collection, launched in 2017, Carina Seth Andersson created a series of everyday bowls and plates in glazed clay that united the refined, simplistic expression of Nordic and Japanese crafts. The series was designed for the modern kitchen as multifunctional vessels for holding, preparing, and serving.

A characteristic spout runs as a red thread through the different designs, but as the size of the spout remains the same in bowls of different shapes and dimensions, the proportions are transformed and thus create a unique expression in each object. In spring 2022, some of these pieces were revisited and reintroduced alongside new and original designs.

Carina Seth Andersson works out of her studio in the ceramic centre of Gustavsberg in the Stockholm archipelago.

Her products have been exhibited in galleries in New York, Paris, Milan, and Tokyo, and her pieces are part of the permanent collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and Designmuseum Danmark in Copenhagen.