Deep blue mouth-blown glass gives this Holmegaard bowl, model 17792, its quiet presence. Designed by Per Lütken, it belongs to the family first introduced in 1955 as Arne and later reissued as Provence, and this example dates from the 1960s.
Lütken was Holmegaard's artistic director from 1942 until 1998, and the Arne bowl is one of the clearest statements of his postwar approach. Instead of hard geometry, the shape seems to have settled naturally while the glass was still soft: a wide, shallow body rising from a heavy base, with a rim that folds gently inward and gives the bowl its slightly irregular, organic outline. The design proved lasting enough that Holmegaard brought it back under the Provence name in 1982, and it remains closely associated with the Danish glassworks today.
The colour is the defining feature of this piece. The blue deepens where the glass is thickest, towards the base and along the curve of the rim, and lightens across the thinner walls, so the tone shifts as light passes through it. Because each bowl was shaped by hand, small variations in thickness, colour and outline mean no two pieces are exactly alike.
Suited to fruit or simply displayed on its own, it works equally well in a mid-century interior or a contemporary setting, and makes an accessible introduction to Danish art glass from Holmegaard's most productive decades.
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