"Mikrokosmos" Urn in Iron with Verdigris Finish by Olof Holt for Nafveqvarns

Iconic “Mikrokosmos” (“Microcosm”) urn designed by Olof Hult (1892-1962) for the Nafveqvarns Bruk, in cast iron with uncommon original verdigris finish , Sweden, designed 1922, executed 1923-early 1930s.

By the early 20th century, cast iron was generally considered an old-fashioned medium best relegated to mundane applications such as fabricating lamp posts and benches, which the 300 year old Näfveqvarns Foundry of Sweden had been producing, until 1911, when the company came under the direction of a dynamic new leader. After becoming its general manager, Danish engineer Alfred Dybsö enacted a number of technical advances at Näfveqvarns, most notably developing a chemical treatment that facilitated the casting of detailed relief work.

The new casting technology was put into practice in 1912 when the firm collaborated with the Swedish Society of Craft and Industrial Design (a group set up to improve design standards in Swedish industry) on a competition that opened the designing of new models to outside talent. Soon a number of the era’s rising talents, such as architects Folke Bensow, Gunnar Asplund, Uno Åhrén and Carl Hörvik, and sculptors, such as Ivar Johnson, Anna Petrus, and Erik Gate, were designing furniture, decorative plaques, urns and other pieces for the Foundry.

The partnership with these artists resulted in some of the most iconic and original examples of the “Modern Classicism” aesthetic that dominated Swedish design in the 1920s. A sleek and lyrical take on the classical tradition, the style took its cues from the various forms of classical revival that had been popular in Sweden since the late 18th century, rationalizing and rearranging them, and adding a fair share of Art Moderne sensibilities in the process.

Through publications and exhibitions, Näfveqvarns garnered international acclaim, with models displayed at Hemutställningen in 1917, the Jubilee Exhibition in Gothenburg in 1923, the Paris Exposition of 1925, as well as a follow-up exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the same year. In Paris, Näfveqvarns designs were on prominent display within and around Carl Bergsten’s Swedish National Pavilion.

After graduating from the Royal Institute of Technology in 1919, Olof Hult (1892-1962) worked under influential architects Lars Israel Wahlman and Ivar Tengbom. During his tenure in the Tengbom office, he worked on two of the most important commissions of the 1920s, the landmark Stockholms Konserthus and the infamously luxurious “Matchstick Palace” headquarters of safety match monopolist Ivar Krüger. In the 1930s, like that of most Swedish architects, Hult’s work would became more “Functionalist” (as the local Swedish modernist movement described itself) in tone.

Hult designed several models for the Näfveqvarns Foundry, most notably, this urn model, “Mikrokosmos” and the “Snäckurnan,”, both designed in 1922 and put into production the following year. Both of Hult’s urn designs are unique among the Foundry’s artistic offerings in their almost mystical commentary on nature and the universe (in contrast to the light-hearted classicism that characterizes most of this production). “Mikrokosmos” (“Microcosm”) uses symbols of the natural world and the cosmos to represent a self-contained universe. (“Snäckurnan” was inspired by the spiraling of a shell.)

Literature:
Christian Björk, Näfveqvarns Bruk Konstnärer och Arkitekter Till Industrin, Stockholm, 2013, pgs. 60-61