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THE EARLY YEARS
1907 - 1933
Rasmus Skov was
born in Middelfart, Denmark on the 10th of June, 1907 to Nis Madsen Skov and
Ellen Holm Skov as the third of their six children. His father owned and
operated a pottery and ceramics factory in Middelfart, a provincial town
located on the north-eastern coast of the island Fyn, which provided the
economic basis for the growing family during the years leading up to, and
during, the First World War.
It was at the
ceramics workshop that Rasmus Skov at the age of six or seven was already
introduced to the combination of work ethics, self discipline and hands-on
training required to succeed at the craftsman's bench. And it was here he
learned to respect the interaction between the materials and the artisans
forming the pottery and providing its decoration following rules
established by long tradition and guided by the materials themselves, the
available technology and the craftsman’s creativity. Nis Skov was himself a
craftsman turned industrialist, and he valued solid quality workmanship.
The cultural and
artistic influence in the family came primarily from the musically talented
Ellen Holm Skov, who before her marriage had received training as an opera
singer in Copenhagen. The Skov home during the years in Middelfart
through 1919 was a center of artistic activity with particular emphasis on
decorative design, ceramic decoration and musical performances. These
activities had a direct relationship to the people involved with Skov’s
ceramics business and they also provided cultural stimulation aimed to
strengthen the small community during the difficult war years. From the
exposure to these concrete examples of artistic effort, the young Rasmus
Skov developed his own personal convictions of the relevance of art as it
became an integrated part of his life, and he gained an appreciation of the
usefulness of aesthetics and the beauty of design.
At his father’s
ceramics workshop during his grade-school years, Skov learned the classic
Barbotine technique of using a perforated cow horn to apply liquid glaze
repeatedly to pottery; a technique he later used. And it was also here, at
an early age, that he first felt the power of combining personally trained
artistic skills with the experience and knowledge of previous generations.
He realized that this artisan’s tradition is the basis for becoming a
genuine master-craftsman in any art or craft. These early lessons in
craftsmanship became an integral part of Skov’s ideology for the rest of
his life.
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