KunstenaarSwedish
Kjell Blomberg
3 actieve items
Kjell Eber Blomberg was born in Stockholm on 4 September 1931, and over a career spanning three decades he moved across nearly every material of Swedish postwar design: ceramics, pressed and blown glass, and architectural lighting. His work is not flashy, but it is persistent - it appears on tables, windowsills and walls across Scandinavia, quietly occupying the space between utility and pleasure that defines the best Swedish design of the 1960s and 1970s.
After completing his design studies, Blomberg travelled to Finland and joined the Arabia porcelain factory in Helsinki, gaining early experience in an institution that had shaped several generations of Nordic designers. He returned to Sweden in the mid-1950s, initially joining Upsala-Ekeby, where he designed ornamental ceramics including the bold sculptural "Turbin" series of 1954. In 1957 he moved to Gabrielverken - the parent company of Gabriel Keramik - based in Timmernabben and Örsjö, where he worked for approximately ten years designing both ceramic objects and lighting fixtures.
The central chapter of his career ran from 1955 to 1977 at Gullaskruf glasbruk, a glassworks in Småland whose output he shaped alongside Arthur Percy. Blomberg was brought in to succeed the recently deceased Hugo Gehlin and took the factory's aesthetic in a more geometric, pattern-focused direction. The Vineta series, designed in 1962, became his most commercially durable work: pressed glass bowls, trays and serving pieces in olive green, ruby red, smoky grey and clear glass, their surfaces textured with a distinctive geometric pattern. Stackable and practical, Vineta sold widely throughout the decade and remains a fixture of Scandinavian vintage markets today. The Stellaria line extended this approach with a star-pattern motif suited to tableware and candle holders. His 1969 Printura series applied a net-pattern to rounded forms, and the Häppar series of 1971 took a more playful direction - spherical glass pieces decorated with graphic motifs including lips, eyes, stylized owls and gold hearts, produced in some fifteen to twenty variants.
Alongside his glass work, Blomberg continued designing lighting, and lamps bearing his name from Örsjö Belysning - particularly his brass table and wall lamps of the 1970s - appear regularly at auction. The work he did for Gabriel Keramik also surfaces at sale, including wall reliefs and lanterns in characteristic mid-century ceramic. He died in 1989 at the age of 57.
On Auctionist, Blomberg's 37 indexed lots are dominated by his glass work, with 23 lots in the Glass category and 6 in Lighting. The top recorded prices reflect the practical nature of his output: 3,051 SEK for a Gullaskruf vase and 1,500 SEK for a pair of Örsjö brass table lamps. His pieces turn up at regional Swedish houses - Formstad Auktioner, Gomér and Andersson, Helsingborgs Auktionskammare - rather than the major metropolitan rooms, which tracks with the domestic, everyday quality of his best work.