Heart of glass: Get to know Swedish glass master Morgan Persson

Morgan Persson hadn’t planned on becoming a glassblower. “It was a coincidence,” says the 45-year-old Swedish artist. “I was out having drinks with some friends, and on the way home, we started talking about glass.” This conversation led to glassblowing and how none of the group had ever seen it happen, apart from on television. The then 20-year-old Persson was instantly intrigued.

“At that time, there was nothing that I wanted to do, really – no jobs that I was interested in or studies,” Persson says. He played volleyball semi-seriously, but that didn’t feel like a proper career path. “When I realised that that [glassblowing] was what I wanted to do, I was determined to make it happen.” Chasing his newfound dream, he left his home in the countryside on Sweden’s west coast and moved south to Orrefors, where he enrolled in the renowned National School of Glass.

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Nestled in the heart of Småland, Orrefors, the country’s Glasriket, is famous for its long and rich history with glassblowing. In the quaint village, the craft dates back to 1742, when Swedish heritage glassware brand Kosta Glasbruk (now Kosta Boda) began its operations. The past centuries have seen a bevy of other notable glass purveyors – Målerås, Bergdala and Skruf to name a few – flock to the area. Today, Orrefors is home to over a dozen glassworks and studios. “When you talk to people from around here, everyone has a relative who has worked with glass,” Persson says.

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After graduating, Persson left Orrefors for a while and worked for glassware companies across Scandinavia, eventually settling down in Stockholm, where he opened his very first studio. However, city life didn’t agree with Persson and his wife, Elin, who returned to the glass kingdom after the birth of their first child. “Elin wanted to have something of her own – not just an apartment, but a house,” Persson says. “We met each other in the glass school, so both of us already knew people in Orrefors – we thought that maybe it’s a good idea to move back.” The couple purchased a charming 1950s wooden house surrounded by lush woods and began to build their own glass empire.

Immediately upon his return to Orrefors, Persson was enthralled by a new way of working with glass, specifically, a more sustainable way. Teaming up with local glassblower Leif Hauge, he learned the ins and outs of working with recycled glass. The duo spent a decade together repurposing old glass, such as wine bottles, into delicate drinking glasses and quirky vases.

“We clean and warm up the bottle to 560 degrees and shape it to something else,” Persson says. After heating up the glass, he places it in a furnace, where it sits at scorching 1,200 degrees, ready to be opened up and formed into a new object. The coolest part? “Once the piece is finished, you can still see what it was before,” Persson says. The inventive and eco-friendly approach quickly garnered the interest of locals and tourists alike. “People were coming in, bringing their own bottles and asking if we could turn them into drinking glasses or juice bottles,” he says. As the popularity of their studio kept growing, an adjoining gallery, a cafe and a shop were built. The Perssons’ glass kingdom was born.

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While continuing to work with recycled glass, recent years have seen Persson rekindling his love for art glass. Using self-taught, elaborate techniques – marbling colours, especially – he crafts pieces that galleries and collectors across the globe rush to snap up. Meanwhile, Elin, who has paused her career with glass for now, runs their cafe, which has become an enormous success. The couple has four children, Liv, Ester, Jona and Vanja, who are a great source of inspiration for Persson: the artist often draws and etches his loved ones into his popular Graal vases and sculptures.

In the future, Persson dreams of solely working with recycled glass, including in his artworks. The majority of contemporary glass artists currently only use crystal glass due to the broad colour selection available and because it’s easier to work with. Still, Persson is determined to find a more conscious way of working, saying, “The industry needs to start thinking more sustainably.”

You can purchase Morgan Persson's pieces on perssonochpersson.se