About the Collection
In 1940 the Danish-born Ernst Lorenzen married Alma Goguen in Dieppe, New Brunswick. Five years later Ernst and Alma would start a new hobby of ceramics. Starting with more traditional pottery Ernst operated the wheel and Alma sculpted. In 1949, four years after their interest in ceramics began, the Lorenzens moved to Lantz, Nova Scotia and brought Lorenzen Pottery with them.
In her book, The Lorenzen Collection, Joyce Barkhouse recounts the beginning of the Lorenzen's mycological ceramic journey, "One day in the fall of 1949 it happened that Alma Lorenzen was tramping across a field in Nova Scotia with her naturalist husband, Ernst, looking for mineral deposits [...] On that day in September Ernst suddenly grasped his wife's arm. 'Be careful! You are stepping on a Coprinus micaceus!' Puzzled, she asked, 'I'm stepping on a what?' Looking down, she saw a tiny reddish-brown umbrella with grey gills, balanced on a graceful white stem. From that moment she was so enraptured by mushrooms, those fragile fungi which appeared in such an intriguing variety of shapes and colors, she spent more time looking for new species that she did searching for minerals. Finally her husband said, 'If you like them so much, why don't you model one?'"
The Lorenzens would continue their ceramic mushroom project for over 40 years and, although a final count is unknown, have created over 200 unique ceramic mushroom sculptures. The Lorenzens' ceramic objects remained in relative obscurity outside of Nova Scotia until the aforementioned writer, Barkhouse, published a piece in the New York Times in 1985 drawing attention to their work.
Today Lorenzen Mushrooms are owned and housed in both private collections and public institutions, such as the Museum of Natural History in Halifax and Dalhousie University's McCulloch Museum. The mushrooms displayed here on LorenzenMushrooms.com are owned by private collector Bernie Tuggle. You can read more about the owner's interest and collection here.
