Kosta Boda Glass: Sweden’s Glassworks Tradition and Contemporary Art Glass

Stand near the open mouth of a glass furnace and the heat reaches you before anything else: a steady, dry glow that lights the whole workshop orange. In the forests of Småland, in southern Sweden, furnaces like this have been worked at Kosta since 1742, and the story of Kosta Boda glass runs from a forest glassworks to sculptural art glass. That story, of craft, furnace work, designers and artists in conversation, is the subject of two days in Sweden’s glass country on our Scandinavian Design Small Group Tour of Denmark, Sweden and Finland. This article looks at how the glassworks grew, who shaped its look, and what you see when you visit.

A glassworks in the Småland forest

Kosta was founded in 1742 by two high-ranking officers who had served in the army of King Charles XII and then become provincial governors: Anders Koskull, governor of Kronoberg, and Georg Bogislaus Staël von Holstein, governor of Kalmar. The name of the works joins the first syllables of their surnames, Ko- and Sta-. According to the company, the furnaces have been lit since 26 July 1742, and Kosta Boda describes Kosta as the oldest glassworks still operating in Sweden.

The site made practical sense. The surrounding forest supplied wood to fire the furnaces, and the old King’s Road between Stockholm and the naval town of Karlskrona passed through the village, giving the works a route to Stockholm and Karlskrona, the markets the company says it was founded to supply. Skilled labour came from abroad. A heritage guide published by the County Administrative Board of Kronoberg records that glassblowers were recruited from Germany, among them Johan Christofer Scheutz, who arrived in 1741 and whose family went on to produce six generations of glassblowing masters at Kosta.

Over the following century the works grew into a small company town, with rows of workers’ cottages, a manor house and, eventually, its own grinding shop. The same heritage guide notes that the furnace was moved to its present position in the 1840s. By then Kosta was also making pressed glass, and a cutting workshop followed later in the century. For most of its first 150 years, though, Kosta was known as an industrial producer rather than as a name associated with design.

From skilled hands to named designers

The change came at the end of the nineteenth century. In 1898 Kosta hired the artist Gunnar G:son Wennerberg, whom the company names as its first in-house designer. The idea that a glassworks should employ artists, not only master blowers, took root across Swedish glass in the decades that followed, and Kosta took part in it. The painter Edvin Ollers designed for the works in 1917, Elis Bergh became artistic director in the late 1920s, and in 1935 the company recruited Tyra Lundgren, whom it describes as its first female artist.

The decisive figure of the post-war years was Vicke Lindstrand, who became artistic director in 1950. Under him Kosta’s art glass became more sculptural, often with its decoration enclosed within thick clear glass rather than applied to the surface. The encyclopaedia Store norske leksikon singles out his vase Träd i dimma (Tree in the Mist) of 1953. The works itself was also shaped by design: the architect and furniture designer Bruno Mathsson designed housing for the glassworks, a building that has since been declared a protected heritage building.

What makes Kosta interesting is the working relationship this created. A designer could draw a form, but only the team at the furnace could make it, and many designs were refined in the hot shop through trial and adjustment. That exchange between drawing and making, rather than any single style, is what the glassworks tradition really means.

How Kosta Boda glass took shape: Kosta, Boda and Åfors

Kosta was one of many glassworks in the region, and its modern identity came from joining two of its neighbours. Boda glassworks, near Emmaboda, and Åfors glassworks began working with Kosta in the 1960s, and in 1976 the company took the name Kosta Boda. Each brought its own artists. Erik Höglund, who studied sculpture at Konstfack in Stockholm, worked at Boda from 1953 to 1973, and the Röhsska Museum describes his glass as rustic and powerful. That is a long way from the polish of traditional cut crystal.

Bertil Vallien, born in 1938, was tied to Åfors from 1963 and became known for sand-cast glass, in which molten glass is poured into a mould pressed into sand, leaving a rough, stone-like skin around a luminous interior. His wife, Ulrica Hydman Vallien, became known for painted, brightly coloured glass. Ann and Göran Wärff joined in 1964, and Store norske leksikon notes that Ann Wärff’s Snöbollen (Snowball) tea-light holder of 1973 became the company’s best-selling product. Kosta Boda’s own list of artists also includes Monica Backström, Åsa Jungnelius and Ellen Ehk Åkesson, which shows how the roster has kept changing across generations.

Ownership changed several times after the merger. In 1990 Kosta Boda was taken over by its Småland neighbour Orrefors, forming Orrefors Kosta Boda AB, which Lex, the Danish national encyclopaedia, records as joining the Royal Scandinavia group in 1997. Since 2005, according to Kosta Boda, Orrefors Kosta Boda AB has been part of New Wave Group AB, a company listed in Stockholm, which places both glass brands in its Gifts and Home Furnishings segment. Lex also records that production at the Orrefors glassworks ended in 2013 while glassmaking at Kosta continued, which is why Kosta is where visitors go to see the brand’s glass being made.

Inside the hot shop: how the glass is made

Kosta Boda describes its glassworks as a working production site where visitors can watch glass being melted, blown, ground and painted, and the sequence is worth understanding before you arrive. A glassblower gathers a blob of molten glass from the furnace on the end of a long steel blowpipe, rolls it on a flat steel table called a marver to centre and cool its surface, and blows a first bubble. The piece goes back into the heat again and again, because glass stiffens within moments of leaving the furnace.

Shape comes from wet wooden moulds and blocks, which steam as the hot glass turns inside them, and from steel jacks and shears used at the bench. Larger pieces need a team, with one person preparing a fresh gather, another holding the piece, and the master at the bench making the final cuts and folds. Glasriket, the regional tourism body, reports in its 2025–2026 visitor magazine that Kosta has almost 25 glassblowers working in five workshops. Once finished, each piece is placed in a cooling oven so that it loses heat slowly and evenly, and only afterwards does it go on to grinding, cutting or painting.

Will we see glass being blown at Kosta?

The itinerary describes a tour of the Kosta Boda glassworks workshops on day 13, and Kosta Boda states that visitors to the glassworks can watch glass being melted, blown, ground and painted. For what is planned on your departure, ask a Tour Specialist.

From tableware to art glass

The phrase “contemporary art glass” covers a real shift in what a Swedish glassworks does. For most of the twentieth century, designers at Kosta and Boda produced two kinds of work side by side: tableware and vases made in series, and unique or limited pieces that let them experiment. From the 1960s onwards the balance moved further towards glass as a medium for sculpture; Lex notes that designers such as Göran Wärff drew on the trends of the studio glass movement. Lex records that an Atelier Kosta Boda group was formed in 1990, giving the company’s artists a dedicated platform for their own work.

The art glass and the everyday glass still come out of the same tradition. A sand-cast sculpture by Bertil Vallien and a plain drinking glass both depend on a team at the furnace reading the glass as it moves. Kosta Boda also notes that some of its production is carried out at partner glassworks elsewhere in Europe, which makes the handwork at Kosta itself, and the artists who use it, central to how the company presents its heritage. Seen this way, the art gallery at Kosta, which the Glasriket magazine calls the Kosta Boda Art Gallery, is less a shop window than a record of how far the material can be pushed.

Starting in Växjö at the Swedish Glass Museum

The tour reaches the glass country on day 12, when the group travels by train to Växjö, a journey of about three hours. After checking in at the hotel, the group walks to the Swedish Glass Museum, run by Kulturparken Småland. It is a useful place to begin, because it sets Kosta inside the wider history of Swedish glass. The museum says its collection holds more than 45,000 objects, ranging from ancient glass to contemporary studio glass, and its permanent displays are joined by temporary exhibitions on individual designers, particular glassworks and techniques.

The museum shares its home institution with Smålands museum, which the County Administrative Board of Kronoberg describes as Sweden’s oldest provincial museum, its collections tracing back to a donation of coins in 1792. Seeing historic bottles, cut crystal and mid-century art glass together the day before a glassworks visit makes it much easier to recognise what changed at Kosta, and why.

Is entry to the Swedish Glass Museum included?

Yes. The tour includes all excursions, entrance fees and local guides, so the museum visit on day 12 and the glassworks tour on day 13 carry no extra ticket. If you plan to return to the museum on your own time, check its official website for opening hours.

Day 13: the drive to Kosta and the Kingdom of Crystal

On day 13 the group travels to Kosta, about an hour’s drive from Växjö, for the tour of the Kosta Boda glassworks workshops. Kosta lies in Lessebo Municipality, within the area marketed as Glasriket, the Kingdom of Crystal, a collaboration that also takes in the municipalities of Emmaboda, Nybro and Uppvidinge. The Glasriket magazine names Kosta, Skruf, Målerås, Pukeberg and Bergdalahyttan as the classic glassworks left from the region’s heyday, alongside a number of smaller studios. The tour visits Kosta; the other names give a sense of how dense this landscape of furnaces once was.

After returning to Växjö the rest of the day is at leisure. The itinerary notes that Växjö Konsthall, which shows local and international contemporary art, is within walking distance, a good option for anyone who wants to carry the day’s thinking about art and craft a little further.

How long is the drive from Växjö to Kosta?

About an hour, according to the tour itinerary. The group returns to Växjö after the glassworks tour, so the second night is spent at the same hotel as the first and there is no packing between the two glass days.

How much walking do the glass days involve?

The tour is graded Level 2 (Moderate): participants should be able to carry their own luggage, climb and descend stairs, and take part in three to five hours of physical activity a day, the equivalent of walking up to 8 kilometres on uneven ground. On day 12 the group walks from the hotel to the Swedish Glass Museum. For questions about your own pace on these days, speak to a Tour Specialist.

Glass in the wider Scandinavian design story

Kosta sits at a hinge in the tour. The days before it are spent in Gothenburg, where the afternoon at leisure on day nine leaves time for the Röhsska Museum’s collections of Swedish design and applied arts, and on day 11 the group visits the Swedish School of Textiles in Borås, the subject of our guide to Swedish textiles and the reinvention of a manufacturing region. Glass adds a different kind of making to that picture: industrial in scale, but dependent at every stage on a team’s skill at the furnace. On day 14 the group continues by train to Stockholm, and later in the journey the visit to Iittala in Finland offers a direct comparison with a second Nordic glass tradition.

For the full sequence, from Copenhagen to Helsinki, our learning-led route through Scandinavian design sets each stop in context, and our broader introduction to Sweden’s history and landscapes gives the country behind the glassworks. Together they show how a forest glassworks in Småland became part of a much larger story about how the Nordic countries learned to make useful things beautifully.

Kosta has made glass through almost three centuries of change, from an eighteenth-century forest glassworks to a home for contemporary art glass. Watching a gather of molten glass turn into a finished piece, a day after seeing centuries of Swedish glass behind museum glass in Växjö, is one of the clearest lessons the tour offers in how craft and design depend on each other.