ArtistSwedish
Leif Persson
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Leif Persson is a Swedish artist who has worked across two distinct disciplines: oil and mixed-media painting, which his earliest dated works suggest he practiced from at least the late 1960s, and studio glass, for which he became best known through his founding role at Studioglas Strömbergshyttan.
In 1987, Persson joined fellow master glassblowers Håkan Gunnarsson and Mikael Axenbrant to establish Studioglas Strömbergshyttan in the Småland glassmaking region of Sweden. The enterprise took its name from the original Strömbergshyttan glassworks, which had operated from 1876 until its closure in 1979, though Studioglas Strömbergshyttan was an entirely independent venture. All three founders had undergone rigorous formal training and apprenticeships at leading Swedish glass factories before reuniting to create the studio.
The glass Persson produced at Studioglas Strömbergshyttan is characterized by the studio glass ethos: individual authorship, unique or strictly limited editions, and a direct relationship between the maker's hand and the final form. His pieces include graal-technique vases, sculptural forms such as the figurative glass sword (svärd) in lengths exceeding 50 centimetres, bowl-dishes (skålfat), and abstract constglass forms. Each piece is signed and typically designated as unique (unik) or from a numbered limited series, a practice that distinguishes studio glass from industrial production.
The graal technique, in which a layer of colored glass is encased in clear crystal and then blown to final form, demands exceptional control from the glassblower: the inner image stretches and distorts during the final inflation, and anticipating that transformation is a skill built only through long experience. Persson's graal vases attest to this technical mastery.
Parallel to his glass practice, the auction record shows Persson working in oil on panel, oil on canvas, mixed media on paper, and watercolor across a period stretching from 1969 to at least 1996. A mountain landscape (bergslandskap) in oil on panel dated 1973 predates the founding of Studioglas Strömbergshyttan by fourteen years, confirming that painting was a prior and independent discipline rather than a secondary activity.
Around 2008, Studioglas Strömbergshyttan relocated from its original site and subsequently merged with Bergdala to form Bergdala Studioglass, around 2010.
At auction on the Auctionist platform, Persson's 13 recorded lots divide between glass works (9 items, catalogued through Kalmar Auktionsverk and neighboring houses in the Småland and Blekinge region) and paintings (4 items). Top recorded prices are 550 SEK for an oil on canvas from 1970 and 350 SEK for a mixed media work from 1969, reflecting the modest regional market for secondary-market studio glass and small-format Swedish painting outside major specialist sales.