Boda Kallenberg Lady with Flower, Copper-Wheel Engraved Swedish Crystal, Six-Sided Flower Vase, 1950, Perfect Gift

This amazing vase is about 65 years old, and it sparkles like new! It was made by the Swedish glass company, Boda, long before they merged with that other Swedish glass company, Kosta, and likely designed by Fritz Kallenberg. I love the fact that this vase has six hand-planed faces. From an optics perspective, it means that when you look into a flat side, you see the side opposite it, and the reflection in each adjacent flat side. This maximizes the play of the image in the crystal - clever and beautiful!

The vase is a perfect size for displaying on a shelf or table where it can catch the sunlight. It is about 8 inches tall, 4.5 inches across the diagonal at the rim, and it weighs almost 4 pounds! The design was made by pressing the glass against a copper wheel, spinning like a fixed Dremel tool. A slurry of oil and grit would coat the wheel, cutting into the glass. Different sizes of wheels made different kinds of cuts. The flat sides, faceted and beveled, were cut by hand. Because the edges are so crisp, they sometimes suffer small nicks - this piece has a few tiny ones and some wear to the base.

Boda glassworks was built in 1864 at Förlångskvarn, on the border between Madesjö and Algutsboda parishes, at the site that later became the town of Boda. It was founded by glassblowing masters Reinhold Viktor Scheutz and E. Vidlund from Kosta. The community of Boda Glassworks grew up around the mill. Fritz Kallenberg worked at Boda from 1916 to 1968 - whoa!

Pieces of this quality and sophistication are getting harder than ever to find. It is true that they really don't make them like this anymore.