Ingeborg Lundin was born in 1921 in Sweden and is most known for her extensive glass work at Orrefors from the 1940s up until the 1970s – her most famous work being ‘The Apple’.
Her family moved to Chicago in the US when she was young but when her mother died and her father remarried, she was sent back to Sweden to live with a relative. After school, Lundin started studying drawing at the University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm where she also served as a teacher later on.
She found employment at the legendary glass works in Orrefors when a position opened up and she joined the company as their first significant female glass artist in 1947. The glass industry was still a male-dominated industry at the time and Lundin initially found it hard to be taken seriously by the glass workers she worked with, although she did find a glass-blower willing to create her designs.
Her first glassware came out in 1948 and it was exhibited at the Nordiska Kompaniet department store in Stockholm that same year. The technique used in the early pieces tended to be decorated glass artwork with engraved decorations on clear crystal but Lundin experimented with different engraving techniques, such as diamond cutting.
Some of her more select pieces are her exquisite Timglas from 1952 (Hour glass) both serving as drinking glasses as well as art pieces. Prizes such as the gold medal at the Triennale in 1957 gave her international recognition – the large apple shaped mouth blown crystal piece with a green tint would become her signature piece.
Ingeborg Lundin also designed innovative everyday ware glass such as jugs and drinking glasses for Sandviks glassworks – a side business of Orrefors. For the 1955 exhibition H55 in Hälsingborg, she designed a tableware called Bob. In the 1960s Lundin returned to engravings, the pieces from that time period often being cylindrical with multilayers and abstract scrawls.
The Swedish design industry experienced difficulties in the early 1970s due to changes in the market, and as a consequence Ingeborg Lundin was let go by Orrefors in 1970 after more than 20 years at the factory. It was only twenty years later that she returned to the industry and created a series of unique glass objects for Målerås glasbruk in the early 1990s. Lundin was unfortunately involved in an accident in 1991 and she died in Orrefors the following year.
- Ingeborg Lundin
- 1921-1992
- Received the Lunning Prize in 1954
- Won gold at the Milan Triennale in 1957
- Exhibitions at Nordiska kompaniet and Småland’s museum in 1952
- The National Museum, The Röhsska Museum of Design and Craft in 1954,
- The exhibition in Hälsingborg in 1955
- The Design in Scandinavia tour in the US 1954-1955
- Lundin’s works are represented at the National Museum in Stockholm and The Röhsska Museum of Design and Craft.