Sabine Grossenbacher
Even when Sabine Grossenbacher was very young, she loved to paint and then when she was learning to be a goldsmith, she took her first lessons in porcelain painting. A whole new world opened up for Sabine in 1989 when she was able to attend a painting course given by the former professional painter, Jenö Fenyves, from the Hungarian porcelain manufactory. From then on she taught herself and also continued to improve her techniques by going to seminars given by freelance artists and those from manufactories such as Ole Lindgren, Dieter Beeg, Holger Müller, Uwe Geissler and Andreas Knobl and she learned how to paint animal portrays from Oskar Stauss. Sabine was introduced to the American style of painting by Ester Batista da Silva, Carlos Spina and Marie-Luise Etter.

It is in her nature to always be inquisitive and will always be prepared to experiment with different painting mediums, relief powders and precious metal paints, particularly anything which is new on the market, purely to adorn the “white gold” with sculptured or painted effects. Learning to be a goldsmith was to prove to be a great advantage when Sabine started to use the different oils, materials, painting mediums and paints for porcelain painting. Her acquired knowledge and the following technical know how, added to her artistic talents which she already possessed, brought success to her career. The many experiments which she tried out on her porcelain works have, over the years, proved Sabine Grossenbacher to be very innovative in her painting and structural works of art. One of these artistic styles is the very delicate filigree work produced by her scratch technique. She discovered the wonderful effect of Iris mother-of-pearl lustre as the “solo part” on the base for gold, which was normally covered with bright gold or platinum after it was fired. But she also discovered that to combine precious metals over the base for gold as well gave even better results and can be seen on the vases and other items to great effect. This technique shows how extremely delicate porcelain painting can be – it is visually very exciting, particularly when the colours shimmer with the iridescent lustre that you can hardly believe what you are seeing!