ArtistSwedish
Nils Olsson
3 active items
Nils Olsson was born in 1913 in Nusnäs, a small village in Dalarna that would become the epicentre of one of Sweden's most recognisable folk art traditions. Growing up in modest circumstances, he and his younger brother Jannes began carving wooden horses in 1928 when Nils was around fifteen years old, taking up a craft that had been practised intermittently in the region for at least a century but had never been organised into a proper trade. That founding year, they established Nils Olsson Hemslöjd AB, the workshop that would eventually transform the Dala horse from a local curiosity into a global emblem of Swedish identity.
The Dalahäst as Olsson practised it was a discipline of precision and patience. Blocks of pine were shaped by hand, the characteristic kurbits floral patterns applied with fine brushes in a technique passed through families rather than art schools. The vivid Falun red base coat, the curling saddle ornaments, the flicked tail and mane details, all followed a grammar of decoration that Olsson and his brother preserved while also refining for a broader market. The workshop attracted visitors as well as buyers, and Nusnäs gradually became a destination, the place where the object and its making could be witnessed together.
Beyond the carved horses, Olsson was also a painter who worked in oil on canvas and board. The auction record shows a body of work spanning seascapes, forest interiors, floral arrangements, and portrait subjects, all signed and evidently produced alongside the workshop's output over several decades. Titles such as 'Hav' (Sea), 'Bergssida' (Mountain Side), and 'Skogs skuggor' (Forest Shadows) suggest a painter drawn to the natural landscape of central Sweden, applying a direct, unsentimental hand to familiar motifs from the Dalarna countryside and coast.
His workshop continued operating after his death in 1991, passed through the family and today still produces Dala horses in Nusnäs using the same hand methods Olsson established nearly a century ago. The horses appear in museum collections, embassy interiors, and design archives around the world, often cited as among the most reproduced folk objects in Scandinavian material culture.
On the secondary market, Olsson's work appears primarily at regional Swedish auction houses, with Växjö Auktionskammare and Höganäs Auktionsverk accounting for the largest share of lots. The 16 items in the Auctionist database include both carved Dala horses and oil paintings, with the highest recorded sale reaching 500 SEK for an oil landscape titled 'Bergssida'. Prices reflect the regional and collector-focused nature of the market for his work, where provenance and condition play a decisive role in final results.