This set of three handmade stoneware candle holders was designed by Noomi Backhausen for Soholm Stentoj, the Bornholm pottery, and dates from around the 1970s. Each one is shaped like a small pan, with a shallow dish, a raised central socket for the taper and a short handle that ends in a rounded knob. The three are graduated in size and glazed differently, so they work as a group or as three individual pieces.
Soholm was founded in 1835 in Ronne on the Danish island of Bornholm and made stoneware for more than 160 years, until 1996. Backhausen was one of the designers who shaped its mid-century output, working on vases, bowls, wall plaques and lamps, and often together with Poul Brandborg on lighting. Candle holders of this kind show the studio-pottery side of Soholm: practical objects made by hand, with decoration painted rather than printed.
The outside is left unglazed, a sandy beige stoneware with a visible grog speckle and fine turning lines. Inside, an oatmeal-grey glaze carries hand-painted motifs in blue, rust brown and grey-green. The largest holder has a swirling blue glaze in the centre of the socket and a brown rim; the middle one has a brown-green socket ringed with blue and brown shapes; the smallest has a blue-edged rim and a dark socket. No two painted patterns are identical.
The underside of each holder carries the impressed Soholm Bornholm Denmark Stentoj mark, the word Handmade and a model number, together with a hand-painted mark. The three belong together as one set, which is how they are offered here.
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