What are Graal and Ariel glass?

Graal is an Orrefors technique of 1916 in which a pattern is etched or ground out of a coloured overlay blank, which is then reheated, cased in clear glass and blown out, so that the pattern lies inside the glass. Ariel came in 1937 and is based on the same principle, but the pattern is air: grooves sandblasted into the blank and trapped as channels and bubbles when it is cased in clear glass.

Facts

A pattern inside the glass

Most patterns on glass lie on the surface. They are cut, engraved, etched or painted, and you can feel them with a finger. Graal and Ariel are different. The pattern lies inside the glass, beneath a layer of clear glass, and the surface is smooth. That makes the techniques easy to recognise and hard to execute, since the pattern must withstand being reheated and blown out once more.

Both techniques come from Orrefors in Småland and are based on overlay, glass in several layers of different colours, as described in the glossary. Around the turn of the century Émile Gallé in Nancy had etched out plants through such layers, but in his work the pattern remained on the surface. Orrefors’s step was to encase it.

Graal: the colour that was blown in

The Graal technique was developed in 1916 by the master glassblower Knut Bergqvist and the artist Simon Gate. First a small blank with one or more coloured layers is blown. When it has cooled, the pattern is etched or ground out of the colour. Then the blank is reheated, cased in clear glass and blown out to its final shape. The pattern follows as the glass expands, and the outlines therefore become soft and slightly diffuse.

The first Graal glasses were fairly thin, with patterns reminiscent of Gallé’s. In the 1930s Edward Hald developed the technique into thick, heavy glasses in which the motif floats in the clear glass. His Fish Graal, with fish and water plants in green, became one of the glassworks’ best-known series. The name Graal refers to the Holy Grail. More about Graal glass can be found on the object’s page.

Ariel: air as pattern

Ariel came in 1937 and was developed by Vicke Lindstrand and Edvin Öhrström. Instead of etching away colour, deep grooves were sandblasted into the blank’s coloured layer. When the blank was cased in clear glass the grooves were closed, and the air remained as channels and bubbles in the glass. The motifs could be faces, figures or abstract patterns, in which the silvery sheen of the air draws the lines against the colour.

The name comes from the spirit of the air, Ariel, in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Ariel demands more of the glassblower than Graal, since the air channels may run together or burst when the glass is blown out, and the glasses were therefore thick and expensive. The technique has been used by several of the glassworks’ artists over the years, among them Ingeborg Lundin.

How to recognise Graal and Ariel

Run a finger over the surface. If it is completely smooth while the pattern is clearly visible, the pattern lies inside the glass. Then look in from the side: in Graal the pattern is colour with soft, slightly diffuse edges, in Ariel it is air that gleams silvery and forms channels and bubbles. An ordinary overlay glass, such as Gallé’s, by contrast has the pattern in relief on the surface, and an engraved glass, such as Simon Gate’s goblet, has a matt, shallow drawing that you can feel with your finger.

The glass is usually thick and heavy, and the base is ground and polished. Small air bubbles in the clear glass are normal in mouth-blown glass; see the guide to mouth-blown and pressed glass. Bear in mind that other glassworks made glass with enclosed patterns under their own names, so the technique alone does not show that the glass comes from Orrefors.

The signature beneath the foot

Graal and Ariel glass is signed with engraved text beneath the foot: the glassworks’ name, the technique, a number and the artist’s name or initials. Many glasses also bear a letter or numeral that indicates the year. The signature should be engraved by hand, with slightly uneven letters; a printed or etched name on a Graal glass is a reason to look more closely.

The signatures and their codes are gone through in the guide to glass signatures. If you want to know how Orrefors differs from its neighbouring glassworks Kosta, with other artists and other techniques, there is a guide of its own on Orrefors and Kosta.

Graal and Swedish Grace

Graal arose at the same time as the Swedish glassworks began to employ artists, and it became one of the clearest examples of the idea of artists in industry that Gregor Paulsson called more beautiful everyday things. Orrefors glass was shown at the exhibition in Paris in 1925, where Swedish design was given the name Swedish Grace; the period is described under Swedish Grace in Swedish design history.

Graal and Ariel were never everyday goods, however. They were expensive art glass, made in small editions by the glassworks’ most skilled glassblowers, and they have made Swedish glass known all over the world. More glass can be found under glass.

How to recognise it

Exercise

A thick glass has a smooth surface, but inside the glass there are figures drawn by silvery, gleaming air channels. Which technique is it probably?