A blue planet
Sea, water and glass are related childhood loves on the part of Erika Lagerbielke. After forty years working as an artist in glass she is uniting these elements in the exhibition A blue planet with unique new series of art glass created exclusively for this occasion.
“It is a matter of the way in which we all relate to water on many levels”, Erika explains. “Water and glass are closely related. Glass is a subcooled liquid. I have taken as my point of departure the sensation of swimming and diving with reflections, movement, the play of light and optical phenomena. Such thoughts have caused me to reflect more profoundly on water as a threatened resource. More than seventy percent of the surface of the earth consists of water which is why the planet appears to be blue seen from space.”
“When I was little we rented a house on the Baltic island of Gotland. There was a veranda fronting the house with pieces of coloured glass: red, green and blue. I was only four years old at the time but I was totally fascinated by the fact that I could view the world in different colours through the pieces of glass.”
While studying industrial design at Konstfack Erika was awarded a scholarship at the Orrefors glassworks. She had already tried her hand at blowing glass prior to this, but after meeting the master glassmakers in the factory she decided to leave the craft to the masters and to concentrate herself on design. Her elegant style and her natural handling of the glass led to her being taken onto the staff at the prestigious glassworks while still a student at Konstfack.
Her collaboration with Orrefors has made Erika Lagerbielke a well-known name throughout Sweden as well as in many other parts of the world. Her designs have brought her numerous prizes. She is known, in particular, for her many series of tableware as, for example, Intermezzo, Merlot, Difference, More and Beer. “I have always been fascinated by the opulent experience of glass, the feeling and the balance, of holding the item in one’s hand, the fluid that meets the mouth.”
A blue planet is Erika Lagerbielke’s first larger-scale exhibition for several years – a powerful return that includes sculptural vessel forms inspired by ripples and waves, as well as drop-shaped sculptures with cut-glass surfaces that reflect the light in the same way that the sun plays across the surface of the sea. She is also showing a group of innovative mouth-blown champagne glasses in a numbered edition. She describes this as a “design project grounded in my special understanding of the base in the sensuous nature of glass”.
Throughout the exhibition there is the colour blue as well as a sense of the sea; of water. A deep sea-blue ground is complemented by warm orange and reddish yellow tones. “Blue has been constantly present in my art and my designs. The orange and the red are, of course, the sun. The colours that are used are inspired by the sea at all hours of the day and night”.
