Posted 12 years ago
rebessin
(116 items)
This experiment vase from 1938 is a collaboration between my grandfather, masterblower Knut Bergqvist and designer Gerda Stromberg. It is signed "Strombergshyttan 1938" and is a unique piece. The color is a green-yellow nuance. In the 1930s they tested upp melts in other colors than the typical blue-tinted crystal. In the oldest directories I've found five different crystal colors from Strombergshyttan.
Size: 7 1/4" high, 6" wide on top.
I got the vase from my father. He told us during his lifetime that it existed in only this unique piece. It was a glass produced during experiments with shapes and bubbles in the glass. It has a V-formed inner bottom and bubbles in 4 rows. The edge is driven. As I understand, it is not so easy to blow and drive a vase to this form, with a full V-shaped and pointed inner bottom and a more straight and slightly curved outer shape.
Outstanding Unica!
This is an incredibly beautiful piece... plus it's got this fantastic story about it! You're holding a piece of glass history in your hands :)
I'm happy to show it to all of you glass lovers. It can perhaps be seen as a jump into the future with its controlled bubbles and a little unusual shape. Lindstrand had also come to Orrefors, and at that time (late 1930's) also Ohrstrom. They brought new ideas and forms to the glass, among others experimenting with air inside the glass (for example ariel technique- a development from graal). It was a new step from the traditional design that stood for Gate and Hald. Now, air bubbles was not defects any more, but using them instead artistically.
"The famous Ariel technique was developed in 1937 by Vicke Linstrand, Knut Bergqvist and Edvin Ohrstrom at Orrefors, Sweden. It uses a sandblasting process to engrave modernist designs onto a glass blank when cold."
Is this technique cold or hot work?
By the way I found some Strombergshyttan glasses yesterday that are a grey that has almost a purple tinge to it.
Extremley modern form at this time. Very beautiful. Please show us more!
Ariel was developed in collaboration with my grandfathers brother, masterblower Gustav Bergqvist. Knut moved from Orrefors to Lindefors/Strombergshyttan in 1928-29, but had in 1916 invented the technique (graal) that was the ground for ariel and many other glass techniques that came from Orrefors in the following years. In the beginning he got air in the patterns (like ariel) he wrote down in his story how he invented the "graal glass" (reproduced in detail in the book "Karlek till glas - Agnes Hellners samling av Orreforsglas" 1987. And therfore ariel was already invented in 1916-17 by Knut Bergqvist you can say. But at that time they did not see it as an artistic opportunity. When they made graal glass with three or more colored layers in the embryo this air in the pattern was difficult to avoid. Therfore KB under 1917 invented a new thechnique to drive over the layers directly to each other (and not as before in gallé galss, with "steeping" or with clear glas beteween the layers). Otherwise the layers got very hard to etch through, and (if they succeded) the embryo was then hard to well smooth on the plate after warming it up again. But now, with the new overdriving technique they could produce graal glas with 5 or more colored layers without air in the pattern.
In late 1930's Lindstrand, Ohrstrom and Gustav Bergqvist took up this again, and refined this "defects" to great art. For example the embryo got thick clear glass between the color layer again, and they did not capture glass directly from the crucible (is that right word in english?) over the embryo, but captured glass on another pipe which then was addered to the embryo and drive it over over with a special tool they invented. Ariel is both a cold and hot thechnique, precisly as graal. The embryo must be prepered with patterns in cold (sandblasting and also modern engraving used here, to go deeper trough the glass than etching), then warmed aup again to be finished, like graal.
great experimental piece