KunstenaarSwedish
Atelier Borgila
1 actieve items
Atelier Borgila opened on Brahegatan in Stockholm in 1921, founded by the brothers Claes and Erik Fleming - both barons, both trained silversmiths. Erik Herman Fleming (1894-1954) quickly became its defining creative force, steering the workshop toward a spare modernist aesthetic that set it apart from the ornate silversmithing that had dominated Swedish production in the nineteenth century. Surfaces were polished to high mirror finishes, forms reduced to clean geometry, decorative elements subordinated to the material itself.
The commissions came fast and at scale. When the Swedish public gave a wedding gift to Prince Gustaf Adolf and Princess Sibylla in 1932, Borgila was chosen to design and manufacture the service - over 800 pieces of sterling silver. The following year Gustav V appointed Erik Fleming court silversmith, and the service was shown at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York purchased pieces from that exhibition, placing Borgila work permanently in one of the world's major collections. Fleming also fashioned a humidor commissioned as a gift for Winston Churchill, and Grace Kelly visited the Stockholm shop during her stay in the city.
Borgila was never a one-designer house. Fleming organised Sweden's first modern jewelry exhibition in 1943, introducing figures including Sigurd Persson who would define postwar Swedish silver. Through the 1940s and 1950s, Birger Haglund, Rey Urban, and Claes Giertta all worked and designed under the Borgila roof. After Fleming's death in 1954 his son Lars Fleming took over, and in the 1960s Lars joined Giertta and Urban on the touring exhibition "Tre Smeder" (Three Smiths), which brought Borgila's tradition of handmade silver to audiences across Sweden. In 2005 silversmith Henrik Ingemansson, who had worked closely with the Fleming family, acquired the atelier and has continued its production.
Today Borgila holds the title of royal order jeweler, manufacturing the insignia for Sweden's chivalric orders. On the secondary market, the atelier appears regularly at the major Stockholm auction houses. Bukowskis and Stockholms Auktionsverk account for most of the 21 lots tracked in our database, with items spanning from 1931 to the late 1980s. Pieces run from small taste-du-vin cups and bracelets to large sterling bowls with handles; a pair of 1968 octagonal sterling candlesticks achieved 15,700 SEK, and a pair of lidded boxes from 1931 and 1946 sold for 9,500 SEK. Tableware and hollowware dominate the categories, with jewelry accounting for a smaller share.