Anna Ehrner |
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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. |
Kjell Engman |
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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 Smaland 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. |
Bertil Vallien |
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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. |
Ulrica Hydman-Vallien |
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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. |
Goran Warff |
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"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. 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. |
Olle Brozen |
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"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." |
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