Holiday cards have a long shelf life at Marilyn Ingman's house. Every Christmas, the Edina artist sifts through all the greetings she received that season, chooses one, paints its design on a porcelain plate and fires it in her kiln -- a ritual of almost three decades that started on a whim.

"I got so many pretty cards," she said. "Little did I know I'd be doing it all these years."

Some years she chooses a design that will push her to try a new technique. "I like to be challenged," she said.

The trickiest so far? An ornament she painted in 1996 using 14-karat-gold paint. "You can't make a mistake with gold," she said. "If you wipe it off, it turns purple."

And some years she picks a design just because she likes it, such as a little Swedish girl with birds that she chose in 2006. "I'm 100 percent Swedish," Ingman said. "As soon as I saw it, I didn't even look at other cards that year."

The holiday plates reflect only a small portion of her output. Ingman is a prolific painter whose home is filled with cups, teapots and platters. It's like a china shop -- "and I'm the bull," said Bob, her husband of 59 years. She's even painted full sets of Christmas china for their two grown children.

Star Tribune, Star Tribune
Marlyn Ingman with her favorite plate.

"I have so many ideas, and I paint too fast now; that's my problem," she said.

Her passion for pretty dishware started in childhood. She grew up on a farm in Nebraska, and her grandparents, who lived in town, observed the Swedish tradition of morning and afternoon coffee. "They always had beautiful dishes, and they would let me go to the china cabinet and pick any cup," she recalled. "I would study them. I still have ideas coming out of my hand from that china cabinet."

As an adult, she took ceramics classes but found that the dishes chipped. "I asked, 'Is there anything harder?' and they said, 'Yes, fine china.'" So she found a teacher, Thelma Granquist, and took classes for eight years. "If you have a good teacher and really do your practicing, anybody can do it," she said.

Porcelain painting is one of the world's oldest art forms, dating back to the 13th century. The paint is applied in soft thin layers, with a mink-tipped brush, then fired in a kiln after each application. It was popular in the 1920s and 1930s, but has fallen out of favor.

"I hope it won't be a dying-out thing," Ingman said. "Young people are searching for things to keep them happy, and creating is one thing that keeps a person happy. When I start something, I can hardly wait to get it done."

Kim Palmer • 612-673-4784