Hanna Hansdotter
Hanna Hansdotter, born in Lund, Sweden, is a prominent contemporary artist and designer based in ‘Glasriket’ (‘Kingdom of Crystal’: a geographical area today containing a total of circa 14 glassworks in the municipalities of Emmaboda, Nybro, Uppvidinge and Lessebo in southern Sweden). Soon after completing her studies at Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm (2017), her work met with great success nationally as well as internationally. With a unique style, often described as ‘punk baroque’, she draws inspiration from architecture and ornamentation at the crossroads between art and industrial design. Hansdotter is known for her versatile artistry, ranging from art glass and small-scale production to public design and commissioned work, including an impressive 5-metre-high sculpture, Baby, along Sergelgatan in Stockholm.
Hansdotter’s remarkable career began when she first made contact with the Kosta Glass School, at the age of 24. Kosta Glass School, one of Sweden’s three glass schools, is located in Kosta, a small town in the centre of the ‘Kingdom of Glass’, and has existed for more than 20 years. Hansdotter told Helena Skoog (‘Hanna Hansdotter frontar den punkiga glasvågen’ / ‘Hanna Hansdotter fronts the punky glass wave’, interview in Göteborgs-Posten, 7 December 2024) about how she came to apply to the school:
This is where it all began, where she blew her first glass and learnt the glassblowing trade from scratch in Kosta Boda’s Glass School. […] Actually, it started earlier than that, on a sofa in her mum’s cottage. Hanna was home visiting from Oslo, where she lived and worked at a petrol station, when her mother said ‘It’s about time you started thinking about what to do in life.’ Hanna fell silent and then pointed to the TV. ‘- I’ll go for that then!’ The screen showed film clips, a documentary, from the glassworks where she now stands, showing how her popular candlestick, The Rock, is moulded. The moulds rotate in a circular machine, from which the glassblowers take turns picking up the little pink mountains and putting them into the furnace. ‘- It was the first time I thought about glass, and the next day I called the glass school here. I’m probably quite impulsive, but a lot of things that happen in life are things that come over you in some way. Some things you can control, but there are also many things you can’t control …’
Since that spontaneous and fateful day, Hansdotter’s year in Kosta has been followed up with studies at Riksglasskolan, Orrefors (‘National School of Glass’, an educational centre focused on glass art, design and entrepreneurship in the field of glass. It was located next to the Orrefors glassworks in Småland, Southern Sweden. The glassworks in Orrefors closed in 2012 after which the school moved to Pukeberg in Nybro, Småland which has become one of the main remaining glassworks centres in Sweden) and Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm (where she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2017).
Hansdotter, who lives in Skruf, Småland, did her first collaboration with Kosta Boda in 2016 and has since continued to enrich the world of glass with her innovative works. Hansdotter is known, amongst other things, for ‘Fading Prints’, a series of glass sculptures that move between the ornamental and the abstract, where the technique is a new interpretation of the blow-moulded glass where the objects swell out between the individually shaped iron lattices.
Nowadays, with a major media profile, she has ensured that art glass made it to the cover of Swedish daily newspaper DN. Having established herself as one of the most interesting glass artists of our time, she has participated in several gallery and museum exhibitions, including Richard Heller Gallery, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. (2018); CFHILL, Stockholm (2018, 2020 & 2023); Gallery Steinsland Berliner, Stockholm (2019, 2022 & 2023); Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm (2020); and Kalmar Konstmuseum (Kalmar Art Museum), Kalmar, Sweden (2023). In the spring of 2024 Hansdotter also participated in the exhibition Swedish Glass Design Re-Imagined, organised by Orrefors Kosta Boda, in Felleshus at the Nordic embassies in Berlin.
Throughout her career, Hansdotter has received several accolades in the form of awards, grants and scholarships. She was named Rising Star of the Year at the Elle Decoration Design Award in 2018 and received the prestigious Åke Andrén Artist Grant in 2020.
In 2024 Hansdotter was also recognised by the Swedish Government, awarding her the Government’s Export Prize (the Swedish Government’s Export Prize for the Cultural and Creative Industries has been awarded since 2017 to recognise achievements in Swedish exports and the promotion of Sweden as an innovative and creative country) as ‘Emerging Artist of the Year’, with the following motivation: ‘Hanna Hansdotter’s innovative artistry is characterised by an unconventional relationship to craft. Whether it is a bulbous candle lantern, a wall-hung glass piece or a five-metre-high sculpture, she shows a completely unique expression and renews the legacy of the Swedish glass tradition.’
Hansdotter’s work is represented in the permanent collections of Nationalmuseum, Stockholm; Röhsska Museet - Museum of Design and Craft, Gothenburg, Sweden; the collections of the Public Art Agency Sweden and several important private collections. Worth mentioning here is that Barbadian singer and actress Rihanna (born 1988, best-selling female recording artist of the 21st century with 14 number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100) has acquired glass designed by Hansdotter.
Copyright Firestorm Foundation
