| DESIGNERS AT KOSTA BODA |
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MONICA BACKSTROM |
Came
to Boda Glasbruk in 1965 with revolutionary ideas as to the appearance
of glass. Dared take a chance and won great attention when she first placed paperclips and tacks in pure crystal! Created the term "poor man's silver". Mushrooms true to life and large, sensuous eggs were her signature tune of the 70's, noted and commented on all over the world. With her production of howls and vases she spans the whole spectrum of colours, with a penchant for pastelle shades, turquoise, pale opal, pink and a multitude of shades. Sometimes she adds an edge of gold to a shimmering bowl of earthy brown - everything reflects the colourful person she is herself. She has spent a great deal of time on public decoration, and has provided walls of mirrors and glass for Atlantic liners as well as for hospitals. |
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ANNA
EHRNER |
Represents with her glass the new generation of artists who like to work with different methods to interpret their ideas. She blasts, works with underlay and produces great bowls in paperfine crystal. In her studio collection of generous goblets and bowls she transfers her palette of gentle colours and shades of purple-pink with light flecks of colour. The breakthrough came for Anna with Line, the table glass with a spiral, with which she brilliantly demonstrates how a vision can grow and gell with a simple basic shape. It says something of her own being - cooly refined, considerate... A city girl who devotes herself enthusiastically to a life in the realm of glass, with strong feelings for craftsmanship, alive and true. |
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KJELL ENGMAN |
IS THE STORY-TELLER of the Kingdom of Crystal, a weaver of magic tales. Originally a painter, Kjell came to Boda, via ceramics, in 1978. For him the fantasy world of childhood lives on Tales told at his grandmother's knee are brought to life in glass in mythical figures such as Pegasus, the flying horse, or in starkly chequered patterns symbolizing the eternal struggle between good and evil. That his background is the artist's palette is clearly reflected in his glass, which is often engraved or etched. And, of course, the draughtsman's pencil and painter's brush are themes which recur throughout his production. Since Kjell Engman's pieces make great demands of his own skills as an artisan, proximity to the blowing rooms and engraving studios is essential. He and his family therefore live in a tiny village in the deep Småland forest. Here there is everything that he, an artist for whom glass has become the supreme medium, could wish for-a far cry from his days in art college when anything he wanted to make in glass had to pass through the ceramics furnace. It was, in fact, while he was still struggling at art school that the diverse talents of this determined young jack-ofall-trades were first discovered by Kosta Boda, and even today diversity is one of his hallmarks. But whether he is concentrating on an intimate miniature or creating a massive glass sculpture for a public commission, all Kjell Engman's pieces share one thing in common-distinctive personality, in which fantasy and form come together in glass. |
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GUNNEL SAHLIN |
"BUT YOU JUST CAN'T DO THAT with glass!" The words are those of a master glassblower who had never attempted anything similar before-and who had frankly thought it impossible. It is this synthesis-a refreshing lack of respect for the commonplace and an enthusiasm for testing new materials-that is the hallmark of Gunnel Sahlin's glass. As a glass designer she is not that old, but as a textile artist she has accumulated extensive experience, having among other things been one of the leading designers at Katja of Sweden in New York. For textile artists, colours are usually of the first importance, which is perhaps why Gunnel's glass is often boldly decorated and decidedly graphic in expression. just as a striking textile can dominate a whole interior, so her glass is never afraid to advertise its presence-it is almost always the centre of attention, and enjoys being so, for it is no easy art to captivate an audience, to fill an empty stage. It is this playfulness, like a child's, this passion for trying out new things which makes Gunnel Sahlin's glass what it is. It is sensuous, it exudes a lust for life. |
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BERTIL VALLIEN |
ONE
OF THE GREAT NAMES! Esprit and creativity are qualities that shine
through Bertil Vallien's glassware, and his imagination seems to know
no bounds. Internationally well-known he has received many flattering
honours. 1980 in japan he was voted one of the world's leading designers. Bertil Vallien works with several different techniques at Afors glassworks, belonging to Kosta Boda. He blows, sand-blasts, casts and uses moon-gold. Sometimes adds other materials, plays with net and line effects. Flying men with hats on, symbols and demons fill his colourful surfaces. And all the time Bertil is one step ahead; an ambassador of glass too, with frequent exhibitions and lectures throughout the world. In the summer he teaches at Pilchuck, the famous glass college in USA. An artist of many talents, who also expresses himself in other materials. Over the last few years, Bertil Vallien's boat-shaped sculptures with their mythological cargoes frozen in glass have attracted widespread attention. |
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LOOK INTO HER EYES, deep into that gaze which spans the gap between beholder and her inmost thoughts, eyes which need no words yet say so much. Look deep into her art, for it looks back deep at you, telling of mankind, the bonds between man and woman, between mother and child. As Ulrica Hydman-Vallien explains: "I want to express my soul, to lay bare my inmost feelings, to show the true me and all that I can give. " Most of us would say that Ulrica is first and foremost a glass artist. But this is not the whole truth. For her art is essentially pictorial, regardless of whether she is working in glass or ceramics or the more abstract world of oils and watercolours. She paints her motifs straight onto the surface of the piece as if the now-frozen glass were a three-dimensional canvas. And what we see more often than not are eyes, eyes watching us, seeking us out, searching for contact, sharing their contradictory world with the bold wolf and the snake-beings, however, which should not be interpreted in a Freudian sense. For her, the snake is a vibrant, sensuous nerve, the embodiment of life itself which only the prudent can or dare approach, while her wolf is power-natural, free and unbound, a true creature of the wilds, a force which, albeit oppressed, is yet present in man. Ulrica Hydman-Vallien was brought up in a highly creative family in which her mother was not only her mother but also something of her artistic mentor. And in Ulrica the adult there is still very much of a mother and of Ulrica the child. Today she lives and works in Afors, a tiny village deep in the forest a stone's throw from the glassworks. Here, she says, she feels safe. Here she can find the inner peace to enable her to set out on long journeys across uncharted oceans, over waters bridged only by winds and by thought. And where she can listen to the snakes and the wolves. |
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ANN WAHLSTROM |
THERE IS SOMETHING CLASSIC about Ann Wahlstrom's glass, something timeless, something suggestive of an aesthetic with its roots firmly lodged in the past and yet ideally suited to the tastes of the future-in the eyes of many, placing it firmly in the post-modern age we are living in. But just as small-scale country crafts and the pulsating rhythm of industrial New York are diametrical opposites, yet there is a link between them, at least as perceived by Ann Wahlsrtom. In her glass, opposites combine; opposites that give and take; opposites that purify and seek new forms; opposites that synthesize to create striking new designs. What is more, Ann is herself an accomplished craftswoman, having sweated long hours by the furnaces of the Orrefors glass school and the Pilchuck school in the United States. And she continues to develop her skills-which is hardly surprising in one who has been assistant to a master like Wilke Adolfsson and who has herself done independent work in the studio glassworks at the New York Experimental Workshop. After a sojourn of several years in New York, which included studies at the Rhode Island School of Design, Ann Wahlsrtom has found her way home. She describes herself as a "glass designer" rather than an "artist", for-so she says-she is design-oriented rather than artistic. And, of course, functional. Yet her glass is if anything aesthetically elegant, freely creative and architectonic in design and just "happens" to he functional as well. She came to glass via ceramics; and glass, in turn, inspired her to experiment with metal, a form of artistic cross-pollination which has won her wide acclaim. Her "Mezzo", for instance, a range of vases in glass, brought her the award "Utmarkt Svensk Form" (Excellent Swedish Design), as did her "Cultura" - vases again, but this time in stainless steel. Today her pieces are to be found in museums and art galleries all over the world: proof enough that the designer is also an artist. Or vice versa. |
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GORAN WARFF |
"On his way to becoming an architect when he was younger, but took a training job at a glassworks, caught sight of glass' inner secrets and has become since many years past one of Kosta Boda's most illustrious designers. Goran Warff is enticed by the charisma of glass. "Glass holds in its clasp so many of mankind's desires it speaks a language of poetry, to be interpreted individually by each and every beholder. Every time I see the glowing flow of hot crystal 1 am inspired to pluck out these qualities, to bring into the light their shape and form. That is my challenge."../../brands/kb_designers/ Works with pure crystal which reflects every shade of the spectrum-but can also on occasion place some suggestive colour inside the glass, creating an unexpected source of fascination. Has devoted a fair amount of his time to public ornaments and was in 1982 much praised for a magnificent candelabra, a gift of the Swedish government to the IMO in London. |
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MARTTI RYTKOENEN |
"No
other material has quite the same properties. |
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OLLE BROZEN |
"I have always been fascinated by the decorative: by the symmetries of nature and life, by patterns. Intuition is central to my creativity. I like to call it the intellect of the hand. Glass encloses a mental space in a spectrum of color and transparency, direct, immediate yet ineffable." |
