Crystal

Small: 2 x 2 inches
Medium: 2.75 inches wide
Large: 3.5 x 4.125 inches

Orrefors is located in the Swedish village Orrefors in Småland, Sweden.

Orrefors Glassworks was founded in 1898, where ironworks operations had been run since 1726. In the same year that the glassworks was founded, a hot shop was built for making technical, medical and household glass and stemware to make use of waste wood and labor. Glass now replaced the less profitable ironworks operations.

In 1913, Consul Johan Ekman from Gothenburg became the new owner of Orrefors Glassworks. He appointed Albert Ahlin as manager of the glassworks and this marked the start of a new era. In 1914, Orrefors started manufacturing crystal products, as well as cut crystal according to purchased patterns and samples, Orrefors made art glass using the overlay technique with etched decoration. The new management quickly saw that artists were needed in the business, so Simon Gate was employed in 1916 and was joined by Edward Hald a year later.

That same year, Gate and Hald made their first tentative attempts at figure engraving. They also experimented with the new innovative graal (grail) glass technique that was developed at Orrefors by the master glassblower Knut Bergqvist. The major successes were achieved a few years later at the Gothenburg Exhibition in 1923, and in particular at the Paris Exhibition in 1925. The thin engraved glass was admired by the surrounding world, and both Orrefors and the artists themselves were awarded the Grand Prix.

The successes of Simon Gate and Edward Hald in Paris in 1925 constituted the start of the long Orrefors tradition of creative design closely combined with genuine and innovative craftsmanship.

Since then, new designers and skilled glassmakers have continued in the spirit of Gate and Hald.

Ann Wolff was a founding figure in international "Studio Glass". During a career that to date spans forty years, she has worked as an engraver, a vessel maker, a sculptor, a stained glass artist, a water-colorist and a designer for industry. After studies at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm, she married Swedish glass artist Göran Wärff and worked with him as a designer at Pukebergs Glasbruk 1960-1964, and then at Kosta Boda 1964-1970. Ten years of discipline as a designer in the glass industry gave her practical and organizational skills that most of her colleagues in the glass world, particularly those outside Scandinavia, do not have. An account of her decision to use sandblasting and etching techniques on glass underscores her technical adaptability.