Five Centuries of Swedish Silver from the collection of the Röhsska Museum.

Five Centuries of Swedish Silver from the collection of the
Röhsska Museum
Shanghai Museum 29 September to 2 December 2007

In autumn 2007, the exhibition Five Centuries of Swedish Silver travels to the Shanghai Museum. It features selected items from the Röhsska Museum’s important collection of Swedish silver. The show has been updated for Shanghai after touring North America for almost two years, where it was mounted at the San Francisco International Airport Museum, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa and Scandinavia House in New York.

^ Sugar bowl and cover 1796.
Pehr Zethelius (active 1766–1810), Stockholm, Sweden. Silver, gilt. Photographer: Mikael Lammgård, Röhsska Museum.

Five Centuries of Swedish Silver consists of 150 selected items representing Swedish silver from the early 16th century to today. Swedish silver has a venerable tradition even if it cannot compare with China’s millennia of history and rich culture. For centuries, Chinese pieces have flowed into Europe, where they have been admired and appreciated.
The Röhsska Museum opened its doors to the public on 16 September, 1916. Among the first items added to the museum’s collection were high-quality decorative art pieces from China. The Chinese decorative art department remains an important element of the museum’s collection. High-quality Swedish work has been exhibited much less frequently in China, and it is thus extremely gratifying that part of the Röhsska Museum’s silver collection is now coming to Shanghai, Göteborg’s twin town in China.

Five Centuries of Swedish Silver includes pieces from the renaissance, baroque, Gustavian, Karl Johan (empire) and neo – neorococo, neogothic, neorenaissance and neobaroque – periods, as well as Art Nouveau, Art Deco and modernist pieces. Its styles range from rounded goblets, filigree work and floral ornament to finely balanced simplicity, austere classicism and symmetry.

The Shanghai Museum and the Röhsska Museum worked together to produce the exhibition catalogue. Elsebeth Welander-Berggren, head curator at Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, former director of the Röhsska Museum and curator of the exhibition, contributes an essay on the silver. Mikael Nanfeldt, a curator at the Röhsska Museum and currently director of Göteborgs Konsthall, writes on Röhsska, and Ted Hesselbom, director of the Röhsska Museum, provides the introduction. All photographs are by Mikael Lammgård, Röhsska Museum. The catalogue is being printed in Chinese and English and serves to document the silver objects.
The show will open at the Shanghai Museum on Friday, 28 September 2007, with guests to include Göteborg cultural committee chair Helena Nyhus and vice chair Lennart Widing, Göteborg cultural administration director Kennet Johansson, Elsebeth Welander-Berggren, Barbro Osher of the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation and representatives of the Swedish Consulate-General. Röhsska Museum director Ted Hesselbom will speak.

On Saturday, 29 September at 14.00, Elsebeth Welander-Berggren will give a talk on Swedish silver at the museum.
The show is made possible by the generosity of the Consulate-General of Sweden in Shanghai, the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation, Volvo (China) Investment Co., Ltd, Volvo Car China, New Wave China and SKF (China) Investment Co., Ltd.

The exhibition runs from 29 September to 2 December 2007

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