Vintage View: Swedish glass maker Bertil Vallien

Kya deLongchamps looks at the work of Swedish glass maker Bertil Vallien.

We all have something that sets us off at every level. We can’t be reasonable, steady, impersonal, even reserved in its company.

The ‘if I won the lottery fantasy’ unfurls in our head, the dreams and fingers twitch, and we wonder where we would place the unreachable thing.

In my case, it’s certain, screamingly expensive 20th-century art glass. I love it first for its loveliness, and for the suspending of a single moment. Ancient, visually invigorating, it has to be worked fast, with supreme confidence, and is notoriously hard to get right at scale.

Shattered attempts litter the floor of even Dale Chihuly’s workshops. Without any hope — I have to content myself, breath clouding the sealed, alarmed cabinets at places like the INM, MOMA and the V&A with viewing from afar.

Norway’s mid-century silver catalogue is unmistakable in its elegance. Finland’s fabric designs (Marimekko) are exquisite with individuality, and Swedish glassmaking never fails to intrigue then or now.

On the BBCs Antique Roadshow on the May bank holiday weekend, the work of Swedish glass icon Bertil Vallien, had a rare showing on the TV vintage circuit. It was a large, press moulded two-faced sculpture for Kosta Tra, entitled Janus — a sophisticated, psychedelic LP-cover sketch with a riven finish and impressed decoration. At an estimate of in-and-around £200- £300, my mouth was watering.

With the growing hysteria for signature ’70s we talk about on ‘Vintage View’, I’m sure I was one of thousands looking past the expected pie-crust Georgian tables and Edwardian diamond drops.

However, to unhinge the mind, banal and unconscious — to become a true traveller in the world of Bertil (and as covetous as I admit to being) — sail away on one of his shallow, scull-like ‘boats’ — dense glass masterpieces moored in state and private collections all over the world.

Yes, he has a large body of accessible mass-produced Kosta Boda designs (see eBay), but these museum-quality one-off works are the stuff of dreams. His most famous quote says it all — ‘glass eats light’. He works through themes decade upon decade, and appears inexhaustible.

Born north of Stockholm in 1938, Bertil Vallien fought free of a strict religious upbringing, emerging as a non-conformist, free thinker, a talented young crafter outwardly at least — wildly confident.

A superb horseman from childhood, Vallien used the flashing pelt of his cavalry uniform at a party to catch the eye of his wife in 1957 — ceramic artist Ulrica Hydman.

That charisma, enduring passion and an evolving curiosity is legendary among glassmakers. Still working, he is celebrated as an explorer not simply of materials but of the far and divine reaches of the human interior.

Leaving home precociously at 15, Vallien studied under the great ceramic designer Stig Lindberg at the National College of Arts, Crafts and Design (Konstfack).

Lindberg’s expressive style was highly influential on Vallien’s multi-layered, considered approach. Erik Höglund of Boda drew him to the world of glassmaking, leading to his first commercial commission for Åfors (a set of glasses). He spent 1961-63 in the US at the height of the popular revolution in arts and society.

Despite being a Swede he upended the ‘Young Americans 1962’ award at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York, winning with a ceramic sculpture — Family on Whale.

Glass — swallowing, tinting, twisting and splitting light — its content and colour revealed by the bright air holding it, is for Vallien a prompt to the soul. Who can look away?

He’s a superb draftsman — planning the experience of the glass from the inside to out. We, the viewer, then dive into the work from the outside to in — it’s penetrable, impenetrable, familiar, mysterious — just like the start of any great relationship.

“Knowing the exact moment at which to capture a shift of light or expression and wrench the secret from the glass is what it is all about."

— Bertil Vallien 2017, Miami.

Oh, and if you just want a big lump of something without the cerebral head scratch — so much of his top-flight work is beautiful in the way a natural geode is beautiful, rudely bashed open and revealed.

Vallien is best known for poured rather than blown glass. He casts his piece in sand, a technique of the industry, to create a complex surface texture to the pieces (they can have axe edges of crisp polishing for contrast). Glass threads, other abstract and real figurative inclusions and colour combine under dustings of metal oxides.

Multifaceted opaque heads within heads, stretched to invite staring into their crystal clear portion are popular Vallien star turns. If I had to bend a New Oxford Dictionary word for it — it’s ‘trippy’ but these are also profound pieces of artwork — ‘transparent boundaries’ as the Corning Museum of Glass in the US show dubbed his show in 2006.

Vallien is a very well read, well travelled political animal. He’s socially awake and pours what he finds both first and second hand, classical and contemporary back into his work.

Ethereal, unearthly, the monumental boat series immediately put me in mind of a lovely little gold boat in the 1st century Broighter Gold hoard at our own National Museum.

Vallien’s boat like the Broighter Gold boat speaks softly of independence, the unknowable journey, the moving beyond this life to somewhere else. See? I can’t be glancing or superficial around this work — the man just gets me going. Put down the paper, or hang up this page — go and take a look.

Where to find Bertil Vallien: For affordable work (€80-€5,000) try Afors, Kosta Boda at their home-sites (kostaboda-artgallery.com) and second hand on Ebay, bukowski.com, and 1stDibs. For exhibitions, images, articles and links to museum work: bertilvallien.nu.