This Sargasso bowl was designed by Paul Kedelv for the Swedish glassworks Reijmyre in the 1960s. It is a heavy, nearly square vessel in cobalt blue and clear glass, closer in spirit to the sculptural Swedish art glass of the decade than to everyday tableware.
Kedelv (1917–1990) is best known for the Coquille range he drew for Flygsfors, and he went on to design for Reijmyre through the 1960s and 1970s. The name Sargasso evokes the drifting seaweed of the Sargasso Sea, an association that suits the fine white threads running through the glass of this bowl.
The walls are thick and the interior is stepped, with a shallow floor set below an inner shelf. Cobalt blue forms the rim and the upper walls, then thins towards clear glass lower down, so the colour shifts with the light. Trapped threads and a few tiny air bubbles give the glass a crackled, watery depth, while the outer sides keep slightly irregular, hand-finished edges instead of machine-flat planes.
Pieces from this series differ a little from one another, so this bowl is a one-off object: heavy in the hand, saturated in colour, and equally at home on a sideboard, a shelf or as a catch-all on a table.
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