Swedish glass designer and artist Lena Bergström marks over 25 years of work for Orrefors and Kosta Boda with a solo exhibition, Lena 25+, at Kosta Art Gallery in Kosta, Småland — running through the winter season of 2021 and into March 2022.

The exhibition combines retrospective and new work. Alongside a selection of Bergström’s best-known collections — including Planets, Squeeze, the Puck votive, Cyrano, Carat, and Avanti — the show presents six bodies of new glass work created exclusively for the occasion: Anemones, Heart Flowers, Facets, Origami, Open Landscapes, and Plissé.

Of the Anemone series, Bergström notes that the forms began with the shards knocked off during blowing — material ordinarily discarded. Heated and cut together, the result is a minimal, explosive form she describes as wild and graphic. The Origami collection translates the Japanese paper-folding tradition into cuts in glass, creating a matte-glossy surface play that evokes folded urban landscapes. Bergström spent several months in Japan in 1991, an experience she has cited as formative.

Lena Bergström was born in Umeå and studied at Konstfack in Stockholm, graduating with an MFA in Textile Design in 1989. She joined Orrefors as a designer in 1994 — a background in textiles that remains visible in the rhythm, texture, and surface quality of her glass. Her Planets series, first shown at Vessel Gallery in London in 2001, has become among the most internationally recognised bodies of work in contemporary Swedish glass.

Kosta Art Gallery occupies a building designed by Bruno Mathsson in the early 1950s, and has hosted glass art exhibitions from Kosta Boda’s designers since its conversion into a permanent gallery space in 2014.