ceramicist and entrepreneur, born 1907, died 2001,

 

Even Walter Ulbricht, the top dog in East Germany, felt compelled to point the cultural-political finger. According to the Social Realist way of thinking, Bollhagen’s 558 mocha service was – being black and cylindrical – much too “formalist” and “cosmopolitan”. The ideological verdict could hardly have been more damning. The popularity of the service mattered just as little as the reputation of Hedwig Bollhagen, who had already long been regarded as one of Germany’s leading ceramicists. She learn e d her trade at 18 at a professional school in the Westerwald region, and in her subsequent “journeyman years” worked in various companies, including for the stoneware manufacturer
Velten in the late 1920s. Its owner was open to new ideas and hired some Bauhaus ceramicists, who exercised a strong influence on the young Bollhagen. In 1934 she founded her own factory in Marwitz near Berlin. From the very start HB, as her fans call her, created simple, practical ceramic ware for serial production. The Brandenburg-based artist favoured basic shapes, striped decor – usually blue-and-white but also black-and-green – or geometric patterns. Over the decades, Bollhagen developed a range of sophisticated techniques allowing her to apply even
complex patterns to her pieces using simple means. Her point of departure is often formed by black stripes which are then scored or distorted by turning the piece on a small potter’s wheel and then overpainting them with a different- coloured glaze. She also produced ceramics in naked white, but the clientele for such products was limited. To those who insisted on seeing her work as art, she liked to reply “They’re just pots”. Bollhagen was able to go on directing her operation as private owner for a while in the GDR before it was nationalized in the early 1970s. She remained artistic director, however. Following reunification she got her company back, and, at 85, became an entrepreneur again for a decade. Her successor was Heidi Manthey, a student of Charles Crode, with whom Hedwig Bollhagen had collaborated ever since founding her company.