Made to hang in pairs, these two wall candle holders were designed by Einar Johansen for Søholm Stentøj on the Danish island of Bornholm in the 1960s. Model 3351 takes the shape of a long, pointed teardrop: a shallow glazed back plate that narrows towards the top and ends below in a small round cup for a candle, so the flame sits in front of its own reflective surface.
The glaze does most of the work. A deep cobalt blue fills the centre of each plate and darkens to almost black towards the edges, where a band of incised, feather-like marks catches a lighter blue in its grooves. A thin brown line traces the outer rim. Seen from the side, the glossy surface picks up the light from the candle and from the room, so the blue changes depth as the flame moves.
Søholm, founded in Rønne in 1835, turned towards modern stoneware after the Second World War, and Johansen, who worked for the factory from the late 1950s into the mid-1960s, is closely associated with its blue glazes. On the back, the unglazed dark clay carries the impressed model number 3351 and the oval Søholm Stentøj stamp, with a small notch at the top for hanging.
Because every piece was glazed by hand, the two holders are a matching pair rather than identical copies: the spread of blue and the pattern of the incised border differ slightly from one to the other.
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