ArtistSwedish
Micke Johansson
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Growing up in Flerohopp, a village outside Nybro in the heart of Småland's glass country, Micke Johansson was surrounded by the craft from childhood. At sixteen he enrolled at the glass school in Orrefors, beginning a formal education in one of Sweden's most demanding and technically exacting art forms. By twenty-four he had qualified as a master glassblower, one of the youngest in the country to hold that title.
His years working at Orrefors and later at Pukeberg gave him a thorough grounding in the classical Swedish glassblowing tradition, including the ariel and graal techniques developed at Orrefors in the twentieth century. Ariel involves trapping layers of air bubbles within the glass mass to create floating, suspended patterns; graal begins with a cased glass blank that is carved and then reheated and blown into its final form. These techniques demand extraordinary precision and an intimate understanding of how glass moves and cools.
A scholarship to the Pilchuck Glass School outside Seattle opened Johansson's work to international influences, and time spent learning from master Silvano Signoretto in Murano, Italy, added further depth. In 2011, he established his own studio - Mickejohans Konstglas - on his farm outside Örsjö, giving him full creative independence for the first time. From that studio he has developed what he calls the "graariel": a combination of the two classical techniques within a single object that no other glassblower in the world has achieved at scale.
Still more technically audacious is the double ariel, in which two distinct layers of trapped air bubbles are suspended within the glass mass. The process takes weeks of focused work and tolerates almost no margin for error. A draught of cold air at the wrong moment can cause the piece to crack and shatter entirely. Johansson is widely considered the only practitioner of this technique in the world.
His work has attracted international attention through exhibition appearances across Europe and the United States, including a guest artist demonstration at the Corning Museum of Glass during its November 2300 event - one of the most significant platforms for contemporary glass art globally. He has received the Barometern-OT cultural award, the Yellow Feather, for his ability to honour and simultaneously push beyond the boundaries of inherited technique. Galleries including Galleri Nordica, Galleri Fågel, and Galleri Melefors represent his work in the Nordic market.
On the auction market, Johansson's work appears primarily through regional Swedish houses. All 13 lots tracked on the Auctionist platform fall into the glass category, with pieces sold at Växjö Auktionskammare, Björnssons Auktionskammare, and others in southern Sweden. Works include vases in ariel technique from his Pukeberg years, signed sculptures, and later pieces from his Örsjö studio. The top recorded sale reached 2,008 SEK, with most lots in the 350-550 SEK range - reflecting the secondary market position of studio glass by living Swedish artists at regional auction level.