Haico Nitzsche

Haico Nitzsche was a German-born ceramicist and designer who spent the 1970s shaping the stoneware of Søholm Keramik, the pottery on the Danish island of Bornholm. His hand-painted lamps, vases, bowls and figures are now sought after by collectors of Danish studio-style ceramics.

Born in 1943, Nitzsche is described in most sources as German and, in one account, as trained in ceramics in East Germany. Before settling in Denmark he worked for about five years at Gustavsberg, the Swedish porcelain and ceramics factory. He joined Søholm in 1974 and is listed there as artistic director at a pottery that had been active in Rønne since 1941.

His best-known work for Søholm is the Lilia series, with lamp bases such as models 1219 and 1221. They are plain cylindrical or softly shouldered stoneware forms, finished in a speckled, earth-toned glaze and decorated by hand with large leaves, berries and curving stems. The brushwork differs from piece to piece, so no two lamps are identical. Alongside lamps, he designed vases, bowls and animal figures, among them a glazed stoneware raccoon holding a fish, issued in an edition recorded at 3,000 pieces.

The style sits between the quiet, functional line of Scandinavian modernism and the looser, craft-led approach of 1970s studio pottery. Nitzsche favored dark slate blues, ochre and warm brown against pale or beige grounds, and he let the glaze break and pool naturally rather than hiding it. Surfaces are glossy where the glaze is thick and matte where the clay shows through.

For collectors, Søholm pieces are normally identified by the Søholm Bornholm Denmark mark on the underside, usually with a model number, and Nitzsche's work often carries his name as well. Dealers date his lamps to the 1960s or the 1970s; the 1974 start at Søholm points to the 1970s as the safer reading for most of his production. Because each piece is painted by hand, two lamps from the same series will never match exactly, which is part of their appeal.