ArtistSwedish
Bo Borgström
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Bo Hugo Roland Borgström was born on 4 December 1929. He trained at Konstfack - the Swedish School of Arts and Crafts in Stockholm - completing his studies in 1951. Rather than moving directly into industrial production, he established his own studio workshop, Svensk Form, in Viggbyholm near Täby, where he worked as a ceramics designer from around 1955 to 1961. The pieces from this period - typically signed "bo borgström" in lowercase or bearing a studio label - show a restrained modernist sensibility applied to thrown and hand-built forms.
In 1961 Borgström joined Åseda Glasbruk as artistic director. Åseda was a relatively small glass factory in Kronoberg County in Småland, founded in 1947, working in the same glassmaking region as Kosta, Orrefors, and Boda but positioned at a different market level - focused on accessible, well-designed domestic glass rather than luxury studio ware. Borgström's appointment brought ceramics thinking to a glass context: his forms tended toward clean silhouettes, tactile surface treatments, and controlled use of colour through cased and sommerso techniques.
Three series defined his reputation at Åseda. "Bambu" applied a segmented, bamboo-jointed profile to vases in saturated yellows, oranges, and greens. "Bark" created heavily textured surfaces in cased glass, often pairing ruby red or amber outer layers with clear glass. "Oxid" produced heavier carafes and decanters in which colour was concentrated at the base, fading upward through the glass wall. These pieces circulated widely in Swedish households during the 1960s and 1970s and became characteristic objects of Scandinavian Modern domestic culture at a non-prestige price point. He also designed whisky glasses for the Finnish company Iittala during this period, extending his work across the Nordic glass industry.
In 1975 Åseda was incorporated into the Royal Krona group, a consolidation of several Småland glass factories including Gullaskruf, Malera, Björkshult, and Skruf. The merged entity went into liquidation in 1977, ending production. Pieces made in the final years were sold under the Royal Krona label, which is how a portion of Borgström's designs reached the market.
On the secondary market, Borgström's Åseda designs occupy a segment of the Scandinavian glass collector market that values functional modernism over one-off studio work. The 21 lots indexed on Auctionist cover glass and lighting items - the latter includes lanterns produced for Royal Krona - and have been sold through a geographically distributed range of Swedish auction houses including Södermanlands Auktionsverk, Auktionskammaren Sydost Kalmar, and Höganäs Auktionsverk. Documented sale prices in the database range from 500 to 930 SEK, consistent with the accessible collectible tier that characterises this category of mid-century Scandinavian design.