The Danish ceramic artist Axel Salto (1889–1961) has a unique ability to mine the primitive nature of the material, working it into polished, sensual forms that reflect both ancient Asian traditions and modern investigations of the natural world. Perhaps because he was a true innovator, however, Salto’s slightly sinister vessels attracted only limited interest beyond his native region during his lifetime, despite the growing popularity of Scandinavian design.That has changed considerably in recent years, due to increasing attention from dealers and auction houses. When a 1944 stoneware vase in the budding style brought £373,250 ($604,000) at Phillips London in September 2012 — more than triple its £100,000 ($160,000) high estimate and 18 times its selling price 13 years earlier — anyone who wasn’t already aware of Salto took notice. Setting a record for 20th-century ceramics, the 16-inch-high, hand-built piece flaunts a surface erupting with the plantlike protrusions that mark Salto’s work, fired in the greenish-yellow solfatara glaze with which he has been most closely identified. Ben Williams, head of sale in the design department at Phillips, calls the piece a “mind-blowing” three-dimensional representation of movement.Like it or not, and not everyone does, Salto’s work is difficult to classify, straddling the divide between decorative and fine art. His creations are vases in name only — using one for an arrangement of branches would be sacrilege to many collectors — and are closer aesthetically to Paul Soldner’s muscular stoneware than the sleek forms and pastel hues of most Scandinavian ceramics. Despite (or perhaps because of) the lack of conventional prettiness, Salto’s pieces attract collectors of both art and design who admire their sculptural nature.“We saw a very big jump in interest in 2012, with prices reaching into the realm of modern art and being appraised more as sculpture rather than as functional pottery,” says Peter Kjelgaard, head of 20th-century decorative art at Copenhagen’s Bruun Rasmussen Auctioneers.Kim hostler and Juliet Burrows, who opened the Antik gallery in New York in 1998 (since re-named hostler Burrows), were among the earliest American dealers to take note of the work. Their first Salto acquisition was a 13-inch-tall budding-style vessel, which they purchased for about $2,000, and they organized their first Salto show in 1999, during which the aforementioned record-breaking vase sold for about $25,000. As interest developed, the collector base broadened. “The unique forms — that is, the pieces that were not molded —have risen the most,” says hostler. “I would say 8 to 10 times in value.”Richard Wright has been including Salto work in his eponymous Chicago auction house’s semi-annual Scandinavian sales; he sees the increased interest in the Salto pieces as “part of the story of the rise of Danish furniture.” Prime examples include a budding-style gourd-shape vase, circa 1940, which achieved $15,000 (est. $8,000–10,000) in the house’s Scandinavian design sale in 2010; and a squat yet refined fluted-style piece from 1931 that nearly doubled its $9,000 high estimate to reach $16,250 in the 2013 edition of the sale. Wright also brought Salto to its December 2012 important design sale, where another budding-gourd-style vase from 1947 achieved $98,500.Phillips, too, has stimulated the market with its specialized Nordic design sales, which account for its highest fliers, including a 1964 27 1⁄4-inch-high budding-style vase that reached £79,250 ($125,000) in November 2011 and a 1958 sprouting-style vase that brought £87,650 ($142,000) the following year.Born in Copenhagen, Axel Johannes Salto studied at the city’s Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and began his career as a painter, first exhibiting in 1911. After a visit to Paris, where he met Matisse and Picasso and became intrigued by modernism, he used his own funds to publish a respected journal, Klingen (The Blade), which became a forum for the modernist movement in Denmark, from 1917 to 1920. He also cofounded an art group named De Fire (The Four) while living and working in Paris for much of the 1920s with the painters Vilhelm Lundstrøm, Svend Johansen, and Karl Larsen.He came to ceramics late in his career, when the manufacturer Bing & Grøndahl asked him to design porcelain pieces for its display at the 1925 exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris. The pieces were enthusiastically received and earned Salto a silver medal, leading him to adopt ceramics as his primary medium. He first worked in collaboration with Carl Hallier at his Frederiksberg studio, then briefly at Saxbo ceramics, and finally at Royal Copenhagen, where he designed stoneware objects from 1933 until the 1950s.The collaboration with Royal Copenhagen was a fortuitous one, as the venerable firm had been exploring new techniques with stoneware since 1911, developing glazes comparable to those then used in France as well as those used on classic Chinese pieces. Salto’s favorite solfatara glaze was developed at the company. Named for a sulfurous Italian volcano, the thick, greenish-yellow glaze pooled in the crevices of his vases, creating intriguing variations in color. The glaze was banned after 1958 when it was suspected of containing a radioactive ingredient.Salto’s ceramic works are of three basic types: fluted, with simple ribbed patterns; budding, with rounded protrusions suggesting seed pods; and sprouting, with projections suggesting plant life. Silhouettes range from short and round to tall and angular, generally fired in solfatara or classic Chinese sung glaze. Colors tend toward ochre-brown or green, occasionally gray-blue or oxblood or a turquoise that Salto developed. “Just as with Lalique glass, the price of an identical Salto model can vary 100 percent depending on the color of its glaze,” says Kjelgaard. Adds Wright, “The results track with the rarity of the form and the beauty of the glaze.” But, he notes, “the standout results are for the pieces outside the standard production.”Although his early art was inspired by classical motifs, Salto eventually became interested in naturalism, which informs his moody woodcuts that bear a clear affinity to the ceramic pieces. Though the woodcuts surface occasionally, they typically sell in the low four figures. “There is a small market for the woodcuts,” says Phillips’s Ben Williams. “It’s not the same as the big ceramics, and they are going to completely different groups of buyers.”The market for Salto ceramics took time to develop, not only because of their unusual character, but because most pieces were made at Royal Copenhagen, primarily in molds. “They never really fit into the studio pottery or contemporary ceramics sales, where the emphasis was on the artist potter,” notes Williams. Popularity came gradually, moving along an irregular path, but has been on a steadily rising trajectory since the 2012 record sale. Pieces are held in a number of museum collections, including the Victoria and Albert and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Altogether, some 1,200 pieces have been offered at auction, of which 180 have brought more than $10,000 and nine have earned six-figure prices. Richard Wright points out, however, that the majority of sales are in the under-$10,000 range. “I wouldn’t want new collectors to be discouraged because of that one record price,” he says. According to Kjelgaard, the bulk of sellers are Danes who acquired the pieces when they were made.Salto produced more than 3,000 designs between 1923 and 1950. Most of the Royal Copenhagen pieces were molded, and the company made some for special customers after the artist’s death in 1961, although these are considered less desirable. The limited number that were hand-built, and those with rare glazes or unique shapes, are most wanted — and harder to find. “There is a shortage of good pieces on the market, and the overall upward trend for important pieces seems intact,” says Kjelgaard. “The next really important piece in mint condition that comes to market will give a good indication of this.”The chance of another example like the Phillips record-breaker coming along is relatively slight, but not impossible. “I don’t doubt that if a really major group came up, of the right quality, the results would follow,” says Williams. Dealer Kim Hostler agrees. “If bidders love the work and believe in its importance, the interest appears to be endless.”A version of this article appears in the December 2014 issue of Art+Auction magazine.
↧