Odvar Pettersen

Odvar Pettersen was production manager at the silver workshop at the applied arts center PLUS in Fredrikstad, Norway from 1961. The idea behind this for Norwegian craftsdesigners so important center founded in 1958, was to establish a design center where designers working with glass, ceramics and textiles were to create good models for the industry. However the center is most well known for the craft products in small or medium-sized editions.

Amphi’ brooch
silver, 1960s.

The founder and leader of the PLUS silver workshop from the start in 1958 was Pettersens colleauge Erling Christoffersen. Christoffersen, his wife Anna Greta Eker, and Tone Vigeland were the leading designers of jewelry from the PLUS workshop through the 1960s and until the jewelry production was closed down in mid 1970s.

Odvar Pettersen was trained at a Norwegian goldsmith company named R. Rishøi in the early 1940s. Although he was the person responsible for the jewelry production at PLUS, there are only to designs in the PLUS jewelry collections that are documented as his works, the brooch named Amphi, and the similar pendant Elipse.