ArtistSwedish
Gunnar Muskos
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Gunnar Muskos (1937-2020) was a Swedish designer and craftsman based in northern Sweden, working primarily across the second half of the twentieth century. His output spanned decorative glassware, candleholders, and hand-worked jewelry in silver and pewter, all unified by a recurring fascination with the flora and berries of the Nordic landscape. He is most closely associated with Trollheden Design, a studio located in Boden in Norrbotten County, where he produced the work for which he is best remembered.
The centerpiece of Muskos's output is the Rubus series - a family of objects named after the botanical genus that covers raspberries, cloudberries, and blackberries. Each piece translates a specific berry into three dimensions: the cloudberry model, known in Swedish as "Hjortron", became his signature design, rendered in amber-tinted mouth-blown glass set on a base of cast brass leaves. The "Hallon" (raspberry) and "Åkerbär" (field berry) variants followed the same logic. The glass was produced in collaboration with Mantorp Sweden, a Swedish glassworks, while the brass fittings and overall form remained under Muskos's direction. The lanterns function as candle holders, and the warm amber glow through the textured glass gives each piece a quiet natural quality that has kept them in demand on the Scandinavian secondhand market decades after production.
Beyond lighting, Muskos also designed jewelry - necklaces and pendants that carried the same berry motifs into sterling silver, gilded silver, and pewter. A cloudberry pendant suspended from a chain in gilded silver demonstrates how consistently he applied the Rubus vocabulary across very different scales and materials. These pieces, smaller and more personal than the lanterns, have appeared at auction alongside the lighting work and suggest a practice organized around a coherent visual language rather than a single product type.
Muskos worked at a moment when Scandinavian craft studios in smaller northern towns occupied a distinct position in Swedish design culture. Rather than competing with the large industrial glassworks of Smaland, studios like Trollheden Design produced short runs of hand-finished objects with a strong regional character. The lingonberry and cloudberry were not simply decorative motifs for Muskos - they were native species of the boreal north, and his choice to build a design practice around them gives his work a sense of place that connects it to the broader Scandinavian tradition of drawing on natural forms.
On the auction market, Muskos pieces appear regularly at Swedish regional houses. Auction records on Auctionist show 15 items across five houses, including Norrlands Auktionsverk, Hälsinglands Auktionsverk, Stockholms Auktionsverk, and Kaplans Auktioner. Top recorded sales include a glass and brass "Hjortron" lantern at 3,200 SEK and a sterling silver necklace with cloudberry pendant that achieved 2,450 EUR - the most substantial result in the dataset, reflecting the broader collector demand for his jewelry alongside the more numerous lantern pieces.