This article was written by J.P. Hodin and published in Form Magazine. Translated by Fern Scott, 2024.
1. The beauty of the material
Wiwen Nilsson’s work in precious metals and gemstones embodies the realisation of a ground-breaking artistic idea, or as defined by the Skåne painter Gösta Adrian-Nilsson: “more an expression of a world-view than an artistic direction”. When I think of the Romanesque-style cathedral in Lund, and in particular the crypt we visited with Wiwen Nilsson, I understand what he aspires to contribute to contemporary art and craftsmanship: a conscious and pure sense of style. For this, he has fought a long and hard battle. Like every artist who revitalises and enriches their craft and in spite of the new, carries forward the most valuable elements of tradition, Wiwen Nilsson also draws from tradition. Especially the Romanesque era, with its non-naturalistic and dynamic artistic vision, its majestic dignity and simplicity and its serious and strict visual language.
On the way to the workshop, Wiwen Nilsson remarked: “Why are we expected to produce pastiches? It is a wholly misguided approach. If we are not allowed to express our individuality, then we cannot create anything truly authentic. What our time sorely needs amid this blend of good and bad, old and new, genuine and imitated, is nothing short of a constructive idea that will help us to find a visual language that corresponds to our way of life. It is an inner conviction that must be expressed, and who better to guide us than the artist? So much is said about beauty, yet we must not forget about substance and authenticity. These are two sides of the same coin. Form without precision can no more lead to convincing results, just as precision devoid of a sense of form can produce an object of art”. The technical aspect of the work plays a major role alongside the idea that guides it.
We descend to the basement floor, where the silversmithing workshop is located. Around us, we see anvils and forging hammers, wooden moulds but no machines. From the raw material to the finished object, be it church silver or silver cutlery, decorative pieces in silver, gold and platinum, all the work is done by hand. It is craftsmanship in a consciously modern usage that Wiwen Nilsson represents, and through his personal stance, the question of craft and industry takes on a new meaning.
Wiwen Nilsson inherited the workshop, which dates back to the 18th century, from his father, the court jeweler and goldsmith, Anders Nilsson. By 1910, Wiwen was already honing his craft within these walls. Several years were spent studying in Germany, Copenhagen and Paris. Down here in the forge, the artist Wiwen Nilsson takes a step back and instead it is the artisan that talks about the raw materials that constitutes the backbone of his evocative creations. In bars, sheets or plates, we observe the silver, which in itself is a grainy, porous, and inert mass that must undergo a complete transformation through forging. It is an entirely physical process, which creates a lively, springy mass formed by its very tension which provides the allure and value of silver. The round grains of the material are flattened, are stretched out into each other, overlapping each other. Silver is highly malleable, and forging is the central basic process of all metalwork. Techniques like pressing or printing, milling, and so on which constitute machine technology and dominate mass production, never achieve this level of material hardening. Wiwen Nilsson does not argue against the use of machines; he simply speaks to the inherent value of working by hand. The difference does not lie in the material or the quantity of the objects produced. One can make something as many times as one likes without diminishing its value. He does not share the romantic view, that craftsmanship as such is attributed a psychological, irrational value. In a way a value can be attributed to the freedom that the hand has contributed. This freedom allows for certain opportunities for combinations and variations, enabling achievements far beyond what machine manufacturing permits. Machine work is bound to certain exact predetermined shapes. For every object, a steel die must be made. These dies are mechanical templates, and the objects are defined by them. The craftsman who does not use dies can make an object in any way he likes. But it is not worthwhile to manufacture dies for individual larger items, as it would be too expensive. The essential difference between mechanical and manually working the silver is to be found elsewhere. Machine-worked silver isn’t forged in the same way. It does not acquire the same hardness as when raised and planished by hand. The metal acquires a different tension by the thoroughness of processing it by hand. This also applies to the design of the object, especially for the forms Wiwen Nilsson uses in his work. This plays a decisive role: a flat surface is truly flat, an edge is really distinct and does not not allow for any diffuse elements. There is a peculiar beauty in this very precise exactness. It is the proportions and the natural effect of the material that constitutes one of the key elements of his work.
“Exactness! Precision! Take for example, a factory-made silver etui (case), a product we import from Germany. The precision it demonstrates, comes at the expense of something else. The silver alloy must be softer in order to be forced out into the shape of the die. Our Swedish alloy is superior. But exactness and precision are in themselves of no importance. A stylistic creation that is not clear and conscious does not place high demands on these qualities either. Idea and form must go hand in hand.”
The last part of the forging, the planishing, is of upmost importance. It makes all surfaces exact after shaping them. Wiwen Nilsson admits that smaller objects become more expensive when made by hand, but the question of cost does not seem to interest him as much as the question of quality. We will now follow the creation of a silver object.
“Here we forge silver cutlery out of bars. The bar is rolled flat and categorised based on weight calculations. The weight of the raw material shall be such that the completed fork will have a certain weight. These parts are then forged on an anvil until the fork has taken its shape. The process also includes planishing. The procedure becomes finer and finer.”
We go up a couple flights of stairs and arrive at other workshop departments. Here, for example, we have a room with rolling mills, another with a large draw bench, which has been used for 150 years to draw the silver wire. In an intermediate room, all the fine metal work is carried out. Here the craftsmen sit around large tables and perform cutting, soldering, filling, sawing, etc.
This is also where the parts are assembled, such as ebony handles on silver vessels. The fork, which we have already worked with, gets its profile here using a metal gauge to ensure that everything is even and smooth. It is forged until it matches the gauge perfectly. The marks left by the hammer are then filed off and the grooves from the file are removed with a sharp steel tool. The resulting marks are then removed using fine pumice stone or specially prepared charcoal, after which the piece is polished for the final step using abrasive paste, sanding discs, or felt pads. Here, work is done on pitchers, plates and goblets. In the past, the completed pieces were annealed and the impurities left on the surface after sanding were burnt off. Through annealing, the silver surface became highly oxidised. It was then boiled in a solution of diluted nitric acid. This process was repeated several times to achieve a completely clean surface layer. This became the white surface, which was later polished to shine by scrubbing it with finely sifted sea salt or by brushing it with a metal brush and ale. There was a danger in the annealing. It turned the object soft again after the forging. This is why this method was not used in Wiwen Nilsson’s workshop. The piece is polished and coated with a thin layer of silver through a galvanic process, which is then scrubbed, brushed, etc. This gives it the matt white colour that is natural for silver. Many craftsmen work the silver in different ways. They neither anneal nor boil the object, nor do they use the galvanic method; they only polish it. They stop exclusively at the polishing process. Then the object is washed and cleaned. This is why their silver has a darker tone. Often, they will then patinate the surface. This makes it dark and coloured. “Time can do whatever it wants with silver”, suggests Wiwen Nilsson. “Silver is a white metal; why should it be patinated with platinum chloride to give it a dark shine, to make it appear old? Why should it not be new? All ages have allowed their products to be new. Artificial patina, to a certain extent, prevents the natural patination process caused by exposure to air.”
As early as 1923, when Wiwen Nilsson had his first exhibition in Gothenburg, he argued that silver should retain its own character. He was criticised in the press. The treatment was said to be rough and brutal, because silver should be hammered so that it shines; it should have ornamentation and it should be patinated. Someone suggested that, “Wiwen Nilsson’s silver resembles sheet metal”. “It is sheet metal,” Wiwen Nilsson retorted. In doing so, he expressed his principled position:
“respect the integrity of the material”. When Norwegians later exhibited objects with a similar treatment of the material in Stockholm, this direction was accepted. Even Wiwen Nilsson’s visual language came under criticism. It is based on geometric principles. The proportions of the surfaces evoke intense tensions and rhythmic effects that reveal an inner life. Another objection was that it would be more natural for machine manufacturing to work with the forms that Wiwen Nilsson creates. And that it would be more fitting to have “plastic” silver, meaning a softer, more rounded, sculpted form that was considered characteristic of silverware. It is a given that it is absurd for machines, with their pressing techniques, to replicate forms that would typically result from manual craftsmanship. Machines undoubtedly have a lot of potential to achieve similar characteristics through their technique, without necessarily looking like they were made by a machine. When it comes to the work done by hand, one should not overestimate the purely manual achievements of the past (which often happens merely because the object is old, rather than the achievement of the work as such). The pace of work in our time has indeed accelerated. Time has become more valuable, and people want something impressive that doesn’t cost a lot of money. If attitudes shift, so will expectations. There are already many people who think differently. Wiwen Nilsson crafts a hand-forged baptismal bowl font. Its rounded edges are characterised by extreme precision and sharpness, and the surface is so impeccably flat that one cannot but admire this achievement.
We enter a room dedicated to embossing and platinum work, and then ascend a few stairs to Wiwen Nilsson’s studio. Here, he creates planar sketches and experiments with the polishing and colouring effects of rare gemstones and semi-precious stones.
2. The secret of form
It would be appropriate to look back in time to understand the chaos that Wiwen Nilsson found himself in when he began working with silver. At that time, hammered silver was prevalent (Jensen in Copenhagen, among others). The work was done in the usual manner, but the hammering applied to the finished object was not the kind that required “shaping” (as it was later polished away). What one wanted was a new layer of hammering, an artificial layer, that had nothing to do with the shaping process itself. One played with the material to give it the appearance of being crafted by hand. The development went so far as “handmade” objects were being made by machines. As to form, old style pastiches were made with a strong sense of “Jugend” (Art Nouveau) influences, overloaded with decorations and the artificial hammering. A confusion of styles, with no direction for development. The true potential of the material was overlooked, the sense of aesthetics became confused. Objects made of glass, ceramics and porcelain found in museums, were copied and made in silver. Natural motifs such as flowers, leaves and even the human body dominated both the form and the decoration. The problem of form arose: “Here is a material called silver from which something natural should emerge. It was a matter of working from the conditions dictated by the material and making things functional.”
Wiwen Nilsson bases his forms exclusively based on proportion. “Over time, the visual form has become eclectic and associative, and one no longer perceives the ‘object’ as a proportion of ‘rhythmic units’. The visual structure is not achieved. The only artistic effect that I strive for is a vitalisation of the rhythmic relationships in the proportion. Our time, which has lost much of its appreciation for these things and is moving towards a more mechanical understanding of these things, needs to regain its sensitivity, that is to say, it needs to awaken a sense of style that is appropriate with the rhythm of our lives.”
It has also been said of Wiwen Nilsson’s silver art that it is puritanically austere. This trait is ultimately associated with his firm belief that we have not yet advanced sufficiently in our quest for style that we are left with merely copying or imitating older decorative styles. Solving the problem of decoration and form is not easy. Wiwen Nilsson is not in principle opposed to decoration, but he demands that it be genuinely related to the structure, as was the case in ancient times. When the ancient Persians applied a decoration to a round metal bowl, they did not sculpt the shapes they looked to create but instead embossed the front of the surfaces surrounding the decoration. This technique created a sense of depth by descending into a lower horizontal plane, forming a two-tiered system. During the early Middle Ages, this two-tiered system saw the decoration pushed up as a negative, from the back. Due to the physical properties of the metal, which can bend and stretch during processing, the method required that the embossing work be done gradually. In other words, the shapes that would appear lowest from the front had to be pushed out first. This resulted in a highly developed planar system, which followed a specific relief technique that made great demands on the two-dimensional shapes (the surface composition). The richly developed ornamentation found on ecclesiastical silver from the Middle Ages also used repoussé but may have also been mounted on separately. During the Renaissance, ornamentation evolved from being very roughly hammered from the back, and instead the front became increasingly embellished using a loose and naturalistic style. This shift disrupted the logical planar relationship between the body and the decoration. Eventually, this led to the absurd situation where the corpus became a purely vegetative or organic body which, strictly speaking, had nothing to do with the material, or anything else. This chiseling technique, was likely just a form of renovation, similar to what was practised in Antiquity to adjust the surface of cast metal. Now, it was elevated to some sort of artistic (relief plastic). This was a characteristic feature of silversmithing during the eclectic period that emerged with the Renaissance, and which manifested itself in a declining interest in the body in favour of loose decoration, which in our time has become a rather frivolous and pretentious play with the effects of the materials. As far as metal is concerned, the loose superficial effects cannot be long lasting, as they often wear off with time, for example, through polishing. What remains is a particularly indifferent body, which neither says one thing nor another.
“First and foremost, I want to bring out a strong and vibrant rhythm in the body itself (the structure),” says Wiwen Nilsson. In my opinion, this cannot be achieved without certain ‘restrictions’ in relation to the overall ‘loose-material-principle’.
The “geometric and constructive” values of the forms have the greatest possibility of concretising what Wiwen Nilsson meant by rhythm. Combined with his uncompromising sense of proportion is the meticulous precision of his technique, as we have already mentioned. The material with its clean forms creates a harmony that is as simple as it is expressive.
Wiwen Nilsson’s achievements in creating decorative objects, is particularly striking. Here he emerges as somewhat of a mystic, deeply attuned to precious stones and metals, and with the “cross” as a fundamental symbol of the human desire for form. His crosses are refined, based on dynamic artistic principles rather than the static Greek ideals, where the arms of the cross are of equal length. The harmony of the materials is determined with supreme sensitivity. Even the stone cuts adhere to his stylistic preferences. “The round brilliant cut went so far as to dissolve all form, and the light became mere glitter instead of other cut forms that produce specific shapes of light, flakes of light.” The stone cut that Wiwen Nilsson also employs, for diamonds, is ancient and known as “table-cut gemstones”. It is rectangular and square but also hexagonal and octagonal.
The South American rock crystals have made it economically possible for Wiwen Nilsson to experiment, to grind shapes and test formats, and he has remained loyal to these beautiful clear stones. He often combines the white rock crystal or white beryl with black onyx, which together with matt facets creates an exquisite effect. A single large stone, as we often see in his decorative pieces, is more beautiful than a multitude of small ones, and it is probably more accurate to have one large stone on a finger than several rings with smaller stones on the same finger. When Wiwen Nilsson creates rings, he uses the stepped setting, which is typical for him. It is called this because of the step-like transition from the stone to the ring itself. This helps fill in the gaps between the stone and the ring, preventing any excess space.
On his workbench there are drawings, and on soft wadding, we see real aquamarines, heliodors, emeralds, red and green tourmalines, chrysolites, Mexican fire opals, and fascinating Indian moonstones. In Wiwen Nilsson’s collection, some of the latter are of rare sizes. These drop-shaped formations emit a blue, milky, mysterious glow, reminiscent of moonlight.
In our time, significant efforts have been made to depart from the aesthetic chaos and achieve a new sense of style. We can trace it in all areas of art, including architecture and in arts and crafts. If one were to mention individual countries that have distinguished themselves in this endeavour, Sweden holds a prominent position among them. And this is thanks to some brave, productive individuals, among whom Wiwen Nilsson must certainly be counted.
Caption texts:
- Bonbonnière (candy dish) and sugar bowl in silver.
- Monogram in silver as a brooch.
- Altar candlestick in silver and ebony for the All Saints Church, Lund, Sweden, (Allhelgonakyrkan).
- Bracelet in silver with Indian moonstones.
- Cross in silver, onyx and rock crystals.
- Tea caddy in silver.
- Cup and saucer in silver.
Other captions:
- Chalice of silver p. 16
- Cross of ebony, silver and rock crystals. Property of Lund’s Christian Student Association p.17
- Ring in white gold with Swedish pearl and diamonds p.19
- Cross in silver, lead crystal and onyx p.19
