- Also known as
-
Orrefors
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primary name: Orrefors
- Details
- organisation; manufacturer/factory; Swedish
- Other dates
- 1898-
- Address
- Orrefors Glassworks, Smaland, Southern Sweden.
- Biography
- Orrefors Glassworks was originally a small ironworks in the Smaland district in southern Sweden, an area of lakes and forests. When the estate and foundry were purchased by Johan August Samuelsson in 1898 the combination of plentiful timber and fuel led him to set up a glassworks. The firm was registered as Orrefors Bruk AB. In 1913 Orrefors was bought by a businessman and industrialist from Gothenburg, Consul johan Ekman. Under his ownership Orrefors started making art glass and with a team led by the designeer Simon Gate and the glassblower Knut Bergquist the firm of Orrefors exhibited at six exhibitions, including the N.K. department store in Stockholm.
Engraved glass dominated production in the nineteen twenties when Orrefors won its first international acclaim at the Paris Exposition of 1925. By 1930 there were about forty skilled workers at Orrefors and new designs and techniques continued in the thirties. Production slowed during the second world war but the fifties was a decade of great success which continued into the sixties and seventies when Scandinavian design was very highly regarded. In the eighties new young designers reinvigorated the firm and in 1990 Orrefors AB and Kosta Boda merged to become Orrefors Kosta Boda AB encompassing Orrefors, Sandvik, Kosta, Afors and the subsidiary SEA. This form is still active.
- Bibliography
- Duncan, Alastair, 'Orrefors Glass', Woodbridge 1995.
Ostergard, Derek E., and Stritzler-Levine, Nina,eds., 'The Brilliance of Swedish Glass 1918-1939 - An Alliance of Art and Industry', exhibition catalogue, Yale 1996.
'Orrefors 100 years', exhibition catalogue, Stockholm 1998.
Wickman, Kerstin, ed., 'Orrefors - A Century of Swedish Glassmaking', Stockholm 1998.
