ArtistSwedish
Po Ström
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Per-Olof Ström was born in 1942 and enrolled at Konstfack in Stockholm in 1958, studying in the metalwork program before adding a supplementary year in sculpture. He graduated in 1966 and received a scholarship that extended his studies. He was still in his mid-twenties when a contact from Konstfack led to an approach that would define the next phase of his working life. In the spring of 1967, the Smaland-based Alsterfors Glasbruk was searching for a designer to help renew its production lines, and on the recommendation of his teachers, the 25-year-old Ström was selected.
Alsterfors had been operating since the 19th century, a typical Smaland glassworks in the forest heart of Swedish glass country. When Ström arrived, he brought with him ideas that had little precedent in the house's history. His most consequential move was to take opal glass, a material previously associated with industrial lighting fixtures rather than decorative objects, and turn it into vases and bowls with simple, assertive geometric profiles. Bright colour, clean form, and optical density: the pieces looked different from anything else on the Scandinavian market at the time, and they read as unmistakably contemporary, aligned with the pop sensibility and the space-age aesthetic that was reshaping design across Europe in the late 1960s.
The collection found an immediate audience. Ström's pieces were vibrant in cobalt blue, burnt orange, grass green, and milky white, often cased so that colour shifted with the thickness of the glass wall. The forms were direct: cylinders, bulging spheres, flat discs with gentle curves. Several pieces were signed and dated on the base, and his name soon became the primary identifier for Alsterfors on the secondary market. The impact extended beyond the house itself: his formal vocabulary was imitated at other Swedish glassworks around the country, a measure of how sharply he had articulated something collectors and buyers were responding to.
His time at Alsterfors came to an abrupt end when the glassworks temporarily entered bankruptcy in 1972. After leaving, Ström moved into lighting design, working with IKEA and through his own company Aspeqt. A retrospective exhibition at Kulturparken Smaland titled 'Peo Ström - Alsterfors sista supernova!' (Alsterfors' Last Supernova) later recognised the intensity and brevity of his contribution to the works. His pieces are held in museum and gallery collections internationally.
On Auctionist, Po Ström appears across 13 lots, all attributed to Alsterfors and concentrated in the glass and art glass categories. Sales have occurred at regional Swedish houses including Halmstads Auktionskammare, Stadsauktion Sundsvall, Karlstad Hammarö Auktionsverk, and Auktionshuset Thörner & Ek. The highest recorded sale in our database is a 1969 vase that fetched 761 SEK, with candle holders and earlier vases from the 1967 period selling in the 300-576 SEK range. Ström's work circulates primarily through provincial Swedish auctions, where interest from collectors of Scandinavian mid-century glass remains consistent.