Decanter 2, by Simon Gate for Sandvik/Orrefors

Equisite decanter made at Orrefors Sandvik and designed by Simon Gate in the 1920s-1930s Sweden. It has light brown tone in the glass. Wonderful shapes and lines.

Simon Gate was a glass maker and designer for Orrefors Glass Factory. He studied at the College of Technology in Stockholm and the Academy of Art where he studied painting. In 1916, when he was working as a graphic designer, he was recruited by the Orrefors director Albert Ahlin.

Founded in 1898, this glass manufacturer was one of the leading companies in the Scandinavian modernism movement and is revered by collectors for the fine craftsmanship and innovation of its superlative art glass.

Orrefors began making art glass — works that, distinct from mass-production pieces, are made in small numbers to showcase the skills and talents of artists and artisans — in 1913. Two of the first artists hired by the firm were Simon Gate and Edward Hald, who worked initially in the organic Art Nouveau style, and later proved adept with the geometric imagery of the Art Deco period. Orrefors won an international following when it presented such pieces in Paris in 1925 at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes — the design fair whose name gave rise to the term Art Deco.

His early years at Orrefors were spent worked closely with glassblowers to refine traditional glassmaking methods and developing two techniques: Graal, in which coloured glass is embodied in the body of the piece, and engraving. His style was conservative, drawing on traditional classical European models. He did, however, introduce a new range of colours into the Orrefors repetoire. His energy was prodigious but his style remained basically unchanged. He stayed with Orrefors for thirty years and died at the age of sixty two, suddenly and unexpectedly in May 1945.