"expo 129", a unique glass vase, Orrefors 1944.
Decorated in a "mykene" technique with carborundum with a nude female in sunlight among plants in grey against clear glass, signed ORREFORS SWEDEN 1944 Expo 129 Nils Landberg. Height 18,5 cm.
Åke Stavenow (ed), Svenska Slöjdföreningens tidskrift, FORM 1936, nr 6, compare Vicke Lindstrand's vase in "Mykene" technique, bought by Nationalmuseum, p 149.
Derek E. Ostergard & Nina Stritzler-Levine (ed), "The brilliance of Swedish Glass, 1918-1939, An Alliance of Art and Industry", The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, New York 1996, compare Vicke Lindstrand's "Mykene" vases, catalogue no 126-129, pp 280-282.
The mykene technique was devised by Vicke Lindstrand in 1936, a further development of the graal technique that was introduced at the Paris World's Fair in 1937. Crystallized carborundum was mixed with water and used to paint the design on the cooled blank, then reheated and finally a sheet of molten clear glass was blown over the blank.
Very few objects are made in this technique. In the factory book, the vase with expo no. 129 is mentioned as "figure in carborundum white, height 190 mm, Landberg". The factory's sales price was then SEK 125. This can be compared with, for example, an Edward Hald "fish graal" from the same period where prices were in a range between SEK 30-120.