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Edward Hald
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Before he ever touched molten glass, Edward Hald studied painting in Paris under Henri Matisse. That training shows. His engraved glass pieces carry a lightness of line, a fluidity in the figures, women playing ball, dancers in motion, aquatic scenes, that owes more to the Fauvist master's studio than to any Swedish glass tradition. When Hald brought this sensibility to Orrefors in 1917, he helped transform a modest utility glassworks into one of the world's most admired art glass producers.
Edward Hald (17 September 1883, 4 July 1980) was born in Stockholm and initially trained as an architect before turning to painting. His years in Paris, studying under Matisse and absorbing the radical colour and form experiments of the early avant-garde, gave him an artistic vocabulary entirely different from the ornamental traditions then dominant in Scandinavian glass. When he joined Orrefors in 1917, a year after Simon Gate's appointment, the two painters-turned-glass-designers formed one of the most productive creative partnerships in Nordic design history.
Together with Gate and master glassblower Knut Bergqvist, Hald developed the Graal technique, in which coloured glass decoration is encased within a clear glass overlay, creating imagery that seems to float within the material itself. His Graal pieces, with their Expressionist figures, his famous "Girls Playing Ball" vase among them, demonstrated that glass could carry the same artistic ambition as painting or sculpture.
The international breakthrough came at the 1925 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, where Orrefors presented a spectacular display of engraved and layered glass. Both Hald and Gate, along with Orrefors itself, received the Grand Prix. This triumph at the exhibition that gave Art Deco its name placed Swedish glass firmly on the international map.
From 1933 to 1944, Hald served as both managing director and artistic director of Orrefors, navigating the company through wartime shortages while maintaining its creative standards. His nearly century-long life (he died at 96) spans an extraordinary arc of Swedish design history, from the late nineteenth century through modernism and beyond.
Hald's work is held in major museum collections internationally, including the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. On the Nordic auction market, his pieces appear regularly at Stockholms Auktionsverk, Crafoord Auktioner, and Formstad Auktioner. Graal pieces command the highest prices, with a 1920 Graal bowl reaching 17,500 SEK and a ceiling light fixture selling for over 12,000 SEK. His engraved glass pieces from the 1920s and 1930s, in particular, are sought after by collectors of the Swedish Grace period.