Vase, Nude Man with Harp

An especially brilliant example of the masterful engraving and high design of Vicke Lindstrand and the Orrefors glass workshop in 1930s Sweden, this flaring, bell shaped vase depicts a nude man figure playing an enormous harp. The entire scene has a certain wildness to it -- the mannerist, arched body of the nude figure, his mouth open in ecstatic song, his long hair flowing backwards, and the bubbles rising up around -- all captured in the liquid tones of Orrefors' extremely fine crystal glass. Lindstrand created a renowned series of engraved glass pieces -- often depicting nude male divers and other figures -- during the high point of Orrefors' art glass production in the 1930s. He was one of the leading designers at Orrefors before moving to the Uppsala-Ekeby firm in 1940. As Alistair Duncan points out in his definitive book on Orrefors, Lindstrand developed a line of thick-walled crystal glass at the company and decorated them with a series of quintessentially Art Deco engraved figures.