Though originally trained as a painter, Hald is best known for his career as a designer for the Orrefors Glasbruk ("Glassworks") in Sweden. Hired in 1917, together with Simon Gate he worked directly with the firm's glass blowers and cutters in an effort to update and improve the quality of the company's designs.
Colored glass and engraved glass were among two of the firm's specialties. This vase employs both techniques: an outer layer of royal blue glass is deeply etched to reveal the colorless (though frosted) layer below, allowing the design to be seen in a reverse-cameo effect. The dramatically flaring form and charming decoration are superbly integrated: stylized bursts of fireworks fill the expansive nighttime sky, while a parade of fashionably dressed spectators in a park setting below creates a continuous frieze at the bottom of the vase, visually anchoring it to its narrow base.
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Artwork Details
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Title:"Fireworks" Vase
Manufacturer:Orrefors Glasbruk
Designer:Edward Hald (Swedish, Stockholm 1883–1980)
Date:1921
Medium:Engraved flashed glass
Dimensions:8 1/4 × 11 in., 3.4 lb. (21 × 27.9 cm, 1.5 kg)
Classification:Glass
Credit Line:Purchase, Edward C. Moore Jr. Gift, 1927
Object Number:27.96.5
Inscription: Inscribed (on base): Orrefors. Hald. (script) 248. F. H.
the manufacturer (until 1927; sold through the Swedish Association of Arts and Crafts to MMA)
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Exhibition of Swedish Contemporary Decorative Arts," January 18–February 27, 1927, under no. 29 (p. 33).
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Glass, 1500 B.C.–A.D. 1935," October 14–November 29, 1936, unnumbered cat.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Twentieth Century Glass: American and European," April 21–September 17, 1950.
Baltimore. Walters Art Gallery. "Art Nouveau to Art Moderne: Twentieth-Century Decorative Arts from The Metropolitan Museum of Art," March 2–April 28, 1985, no catalogue.
Raleigh. North Carolina Museum of Art. "Art Nouveau to Art Moderne: Twentieth-Century Decorative Arts from The Metropolitan Museum of Art," June 22–August 11, 1985, not in brochure.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Modern Glass in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," June 20, 1995–March 10, 1996, no catalogue.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "A Century of Design, Part I: 1900–1925," December 14, 1999–March 26, 2000, no catalogue.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art. "Scandinavian Design and the United States, 1890–1980," October 9, 2022–February 5, 2023, no. 56 (as "Fyrverkeriskålen [Fireworks Bowl]".
Milwaukee Art Museum. "Scandinavian Design and the United States, 1890–1980," March 24–July 23, 2023, no. 56.
Léon Deshairs. "Les Verreries d'Orrefors." Art et décoration 49 (January–June 1926), ill. p. 115 (unknown collection).
C. Louise Avery. "Modern Swedish Glass." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 22 (August 1927), p. 214, fig. 1.
Nils G. Wollin. Modern Swedish Decorative Art. London, 1931, ill. p. 111 (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm collection).
Arthur Hald, ed. Simon Gate, Edward Hald. Stockholm, 1948, ill. pp. 60–61 (overall and details; unknown collection).
Dag Widman inEdward Hald: Målare, Konstindustripionjär. Exh. cat., Nationalmuseum. [Stockholm], 1983, pp. 78–79, no. 124, ill. (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm collection).
R. Craig Miller. Modern Design in The Metropolitan Museum of Art 1890–1990. New York, 1990, p. 157, ill.
Derek E. Ostergard inThe Brilliance of Swedish Glass, 1918–1939: An Alliance of Art and Industry. Ed. Derek E. Ostergard and Nina Stritzler-Levine. Exh. cat., Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, New York. New York, 1996, pp. 141–43, 147–49, 155 n. 47, figs. 10-3 (installation view, Exh. New York 1927), 10-8 (installation view, Exh. New York 1936).
Jane Adlin in "'Ars Vitraria': Glass in The Metropolitan Museum of Art." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 59 (Summer 2001), p. 63, ill. (color).
Simon Gate (Swedish, Södra Fägeläs 1883–1945 Orrefors)
1918
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