Allen James Photography: Kosta Boda - Goran Warff

I bought a piece of art glass while shopping with my wife at a Danish furniture store a little while back. While walking around the store I saw this piece of art, I say art because it has no function other than a paper weight. It has a very nice shape (a twisted rectangular shape, with the top chopped of on an angle), nice color (it is almost clear with a hint of green), there is a hollow indent underneath almost the shape of an egg (see the picture below). In any case, I kept coming back to look at it, it kept grabbing my attention.This piece was originally not for sale, it did not have a price on it. I think that it was a piece that they had on a wood bookcase meant to show off the bookcase. I asked the clerk if it was for sale and could I purchase it. At first he was not sure, he went to the back of the store and emerged a little later with a price of around $110. So I purchased the piece. My wife purchased a very nice vase at the same time.

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(Top, Left, Right, Front)

Company: Kosta Boda, Sweden Est 1742
Web: http://www.kostaboda.com/experience/index.html?lang=en
Artist/Designer: Goran Warff
Signed: Yes
Serial Number: 98806

Goran Warff represents two artistic eras at Kosta Boda. He first joined the company in 1964 from a smaller Swedish glassworks and studies in industrial design at a Bauhaus-influenced school in Ulm, Germany. After 10 years of helping define a style with his innovative designs and processes, Goran took leave for Australia, then England, where he worked and taught. He returned to Kosta Boda in 1984, and as before, created designs that have defined their times in glass artistry. Like other artists and craftspeople of Kosta Boda this native of the island of Gotland, Sweden, is inspired by the immediacy of nature, of sea and sky, forest and farm, experienced by all Swedes, including city dwellers. His trademark designs are organic in form - most often hand-worked right out of the furnace - that draw on the qualities of glass as a viscous fluid frozen into gleaming crystal.

"Every glass object is unique. For the observer, it’s an encounter with optics – the glass sings and glitters with light. I want my glass to open the observer’s mind, to capture the sound of light as it rings and echoes through the piece. I want it to inspire," says Göran Wärff.

The common denominator of the pieces on show is vivid colour, which Wärff uses to accent the transparency of the glass; red, green and blue, according to his fancy, underscore the fluid motion of the glass and give it life, while judiciously placed cuts heighten our appreciation of the piece still further.

Göran Wärff is an internationally acclaimed glass artist who has participated in over forty exhibitions the world over. He is represented at design and glass museums in the U.S.A., Japan, Australia, Europe and South Africa.

At Kosta Boda, Göran Wärff is something of a doyen of design. With more than forty years’ experience of his chosen profession, he has acquired deep-seated knowledge of the potential of glass and its inherent limitations, working always in close collaboration with the master craftsmen at Kosta glassworks. Often he issues his own personal challenges to the rest of the team, seeking new approaches and new ways of forming the glowing melt, the liquid that is glass.

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This is the Vase that My Wife Girly bought

The other day I was bored and I wanted to take some pictures, so I decided to take some macro pictures of some of our glass pieces. I was surprised with the outcome, I have included some of the results below.

Macro Pictures of the Goran Warff Piece..