THE ITEM
This playful work Modern art glass is by glass designer Gunnel Sahlin of Sweden's leading glasswork's Kosta Boda.
Gunnel Sahlin’s Glass designs are characteristically of elegant shapes and the strong use of colour. Drawing her inspiration from nature, where the colours of flowers form the palette for her creative designs.
This piece is from the Sahlin's well-known Texas series from Kosta Boda's Atelier studio collection. The main body is crafted from a closely swathed and sleeting semi-translucent turquoise - teal green glass, the colouring resembling sweeping paintbrush strokes across the firmly ridged main body and more finely ridged arms. The base is a softly rounded cushion of clear glass with a fusion of lemon yellow, apricot and white glass freckles.
CONDITION
Excellent. No chips, scratches or cracks, please refer to photos as part of condition report.
MEASUREMENTS
c. 9" / 23 cm tall (from base to rim) x c. 3.9" / 10 cm in width (across widest point). Base diameter: c. 3" / 7.5 cm
Unpackaged weight: 0.6 kg / 623 g
NOTES
Sculpture will be securely packaged and shipping will be insured. Shipping will be combined for multiple items.
A BIT OF HISTORY
GUNNEL SAHLIN
Gunnel Sahlin was born 1954 in Umeå, Västerbotten , is a Swedish glass artist and art professor. Sahlin's career began in textile design, working for Katja of Sweden in New York before she joined Kosta Boda in 1986 to become a glass designer for the next 22 years. Gunnel Sahlin brought with her a host of ideas from unrelated disciplines, experimentation that stretched the limits of traditional concepts in glass design.
Growing up in the sixties, she was heavily influenced by the Pop Art movement and by the Finnish company Marimekko. With a background in textiles, she worked with colour all the time. and was fascinated by how beautiful and vivid colours appeared on glass. Along with the craftsmen and glassblowers, she created extraordinary works of lasting beauty. Gunnel Sahlin is in several museum collections, including the Museum of Glass in Corning, NY, and has had more than forty individual and group shows in Sweden, Japan, America, England just to name a few.
KOSTA BODA
Sweden’s oldest glass company, Kosta Boda, also enjoys a reputation as the country’s most artistic and experimental glassmaker. Since the late 19th century, Kosta Boda has hired painters, sculptors and other artists for short stints — generally two or three years — designing glassware, ensuring that the firm’s aesthetic is always lively and fresh.
Two former army officers founded Kosta Boda in 1742 in Sweden’s densely forested Småland province. (Plentiful timber was needed as fuel for the melting furnaces.) The glassworks’ early products consisted of everyday glassware, such as drinking vessels and windowpanes. As the company recruited master craftsmen from Bohemia, it created fine crystal for an aristocratic clientele.
Kosta Boda began making art glass — that is, unique and limited edition pieces — with the hiring of the painter Gunnar Wennerberg in 1898. Wennerberg worked in the Art Nouveau style and brought a lush, organic look to the company’s wares. He was followed to the firm by artists such as Edvin Ollers, who in the early- 20th century created rich geometric and abstract floral patterns that were engraved on clear crystal.
Two post-war Kosta Boda designers stand foremost in the minds of collectors. One is Vicke Lindstrand, who excelled at a technique called cased glass, in which a vividly coloured or patterned section of glass is surrounded by and seems to float within a clear crystal body. The other is Erik Höglund, who had an almost artisanal eye for glass shapes, and liked to produce glass that had a textured, warped look.
Today, Kosta Boda is known internationally as one of Sweden's leading glassworks with a long history in high quality and creative art glass making with numerous designers over the years contributing to it's prestigious reputation.