Inventive and in demand: Swedish glass design

Scandinavian Review, Winter 1996 by Long, Christopher

Well designed and carefully crafted works in glass have become one of the most recognizable and sought-after products of Swedish design. Since World War II, Orrefors Kosta Boda and number of other specialty glass makers have earned Sweden a worldwide reputation for quality and refinement, both in terms of design and manufacture. Yet despite the fame of modern Swedish glass design, its early history is surprisingly little known, especially outside of Scandinavia.

Glass making has a long tradition in Sweden. The earliest traces of glass production date back to the middle of the 16th century, and Kosta Boda, the oldest Swedish glassworks still in operation, was founded in 1742. Much of this early glass production was centered in the southwestern corner of the country, in Smaland, which is still the heartland of the Swedish glass industry. But while some highly refined works were crafted for royal or noble patrons during the early centuries of Swedish glass making (partly under the guidance of German and Venetian glass blowers), most of the production was utilitarian in nature-windows, simple drinking glasses, bottles, and the like. In the 19th century new technical advances, including the introduction of pressed glass, allowed for greatly increased production and higher quality. But the majority of the molds and patterns were borrowed from abroad, and on the whole Swedish glass during most of the century differed little from products made elsewhere in Europe.

This situation began to change in the 1890s, when Kosta and Reijmyre, another prominent glass producer, began to make art glass in the style of the famed French glass designer Emile Galle. Many of the designs were supplied by noted Swedish painters of the time, including Gunnar Gunnarson Wennerberg (1863-1914), Alfred Wallander (1862-1914), and Ferdinand Boberg (1860-1946), who signed their distinctive works just as Galle did. But it was not until around the time of the First World War that Swedish glass makers began for the first time to produce works that were truly new and original. Following the lead of manufacturers in Germany, Austria, and Bohemia, a number of firms engaged full time designers, giving them free reign to develop their own personal visions.

From Housewares to Art Glass

Among the leaders in this movement was Orrefors Glasbruk. Founded in 1898, the firm had originally produced common household glass products-window glass, ink bottles, and other simple utilitarian wares. In 1913, however, Johan Ekman bought the company and with the help of manager Albert Ahlin transformed it into an innovative maker of high quality art glass. In 1916 Simon Gate (1883-1945), a recent graduate of the Royal Swedish Academy Art School, was hired as a designer, and the following year he was joined by Edward (Edvard) Hald (1883-1980), another young artist who had studied in France, Germany and Denmark. Although both men were painters by training, they quickly adapted to the technical requirements of glass making and soon began to produce their own very distinctive vases, bowls, and dishes.

Gate and Hald's early works, like those of most of the Swedish designers of the time, reflected a strong interest in neo-classicism and native Scandinavian folk design. Yet in spite of their clear debt to historical forms, Gate and Hald's works possessed a simplicity of conception and design that set them apart. Hald's often witty and joyous scenes of everyday life, in particular, represented a revolution in glass engraving, marking the beginnings of a new, decidedly modern trend in glass making. For the 1925 Paris Exposition both artists designed a series of spectacular, exquisitely engraved works whose refined elegance prompted noted English critic Morton Shand to describe the works of the Swedish glass makers as "Swedish Grace."

Orrefors most original contribution, however, was the discovery of the technique of making so-called Graal glass, which features colored scenes and designs encased in thick outer layers of clear glass (see p. 49 top right). In addition to talented designers, the firm also employed a number of master craftsmen, including Knut Bergqvist, who helped to perfect the process. Invented in 1916, the technique was based on Galle's standard cased glass vases with attached flower patterns. But while Galle's cased glass was finished with etchers and engravers working on cold glass, Graal pieces were finished in a hot furnace. The result was a very different and softened look, with subtle and muted decoration contained within an outer enclosure rather than sharply defined on the surface. Hald, Gate, Vicke Lindstrand (1904-1983), and others developed and refined the technique in the 1920s and early 1930s, producing some of the most remarkable early examples of modern glass design.

Technical Advances and Modern Design

In the 1930s, Lindstrand and Edvin Ohrstrom also developed the related technique of Ariel, in which air bubbles in the glass were arranged into figures and patterns (see p. 49 top left). And in the early 1940s Sven Palmqvist (1906-1984) developed another technique known as Ravenna, which allowed for the creation of colorful, mosaic-like designs set within an outer shell. Palmqvist also became known for a series of glasswork called Fuga. Simple and sturdy, the pieces were neither blown nor molded, but were formed instead using centrifugal forces, a method that produced straightforward, "natural" designs. Throughout the 1930s, numerous pieces, some of them quite massive, were produced using these various techniques, marking in many respects the apex of early Swedish Modern glass production.