ManufacturerSwedish
Målerås
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Målerås Glasbruk sits on the northern edge of Glasriket, the Kingdom of Crystal, a stretch of Småland where glass has been made since 1742. The glassworks itself was founded in 1890 by Gustaf Holmqvist, a former Kosta employee who set up a facility for window glass production with around twenty workers, many of them recruited from Norway and Finland. The early decades were turbulent - a bankruptcy in 1896, a fire that destroyed the original wooden factory in 1917 - but production continued under successive company names and owners, gradually shifting from utility glass toward decorative and art glass.
The modern identity of Målerås is inseparable from Mats Jonasson, who began his apprenticeship at the glassworks in 1959 at the age of fourteen. Jonasson developed a signature technique of moulding and engraving lead crystal, combining traditional copper wheel engraving with later innovations including sandblasting and dual-sided abrasion to produce three-dimensional wildlife motifs within solid crystal forms. His subjects - bears, wolves, otters, birds, flowers drawn from the Swedish forests - became the defining output of the glassworks through the 1970s and beyond. By his late teens, his engraved crystal sculptures were already being exported internationally.
In 1977, Kosta Boda acquired the glassworks but stipulated that Jonasson's designs would continue to be produced at Målerås. When Kosta Boda subsequently moved to close the facility in 1981, it triggered one of Sweden's more unusual industrial rescues: 104 local residents each invested at least 1,000 SEK to keep the glassworks running, and on 1 April 1981 Målerås became an employee-owned company. Jonasson took over as managing director and chief designer in 1988, and the company continued to grow as Sweden's largest privately owned glassworks. His pieces are individually signed and numbered, with limited editions exported to over forty countries.
In subsequent decades the studio broadened its roster. Ludvig Löfgren joined as a designer, bringing a more contemporary edge influenced by fashion, youth culture, and graphic design - a contrast to Jonasson's nature-based idiom. Other designers including Robert Ljubez, Erika Höglund, Anna Kraitz and Markus Emilsson have also worked with the glassworks, expanding its range from crystal sculptures into bowls, vases, carafes, and painted glass.
At auction, Målerås pieces are a regular presence at Swedish regional houses. On Auctionist, 43 items have been recorded, with the heaviest concentration at Kalmar Auktionsverk (7 lots) and Auktionskammaren Sydost Kalmar (5 lots) - a geographic pattern that reflects the glassworks' location in the Kalmar/Kronoberg border area. Thirty-one of the 43 lots are categorized as glass, with additional items in lighting and miscellaneous categories. Realized prices in the SEK 300-500 range indicate that most pieces selling at regional auction are everyday production items rather than early signed limited editions, which command significantly higher values on the international collector market. For buyers seeking signed, numbered Jonasson crystal sculptures with original certificates, specialist galleries and international auction platforms tend to offer a different tier of the market than what appears at Swedish regional houses.