Simon Klenell

Simon Klenell was born in 1985 in Sunne, Sweden. He studied at Riksglasskolan before completing a Master of Fine Arts in glass and ceramics at Konstfack, the University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, in 2011.

Klenell describes himself as both formgivare and hantverkare — designer and craftsman — and his practice is built on that duality. Rather than working primarily from sketches, he personally blows and grinds his own glass, treating the hands-on process itself as a design tool. His work investigates glass as a mediator of culture and language, disassembling, exaggerating and abstracting the gestures inherent in the material.

He first collaborated with Kosta Boda in 2009, a relationship that has continued for over a decade, including the Bod bottles and the LAB series, both created together with his brother Matti Klenell. With Kristoffer Sundin, one of his fellow founders of Örnsbergsauktionen, he designed the Big Sur collection for Fogia — a coffee table built from sheets of tinted glass, later expanded into a home desk.

In 2012, Klenell co-founded Örnsbergsauktionen together with Kristoffer Sundin and Fredrik Paulsen, an artist-run initiative that became an important arena for experimental objects and studio-produced design through the 2010s. From 2017 he has been one of the founding organisers of Sthlm Glas, a hot glass studio in Gustavsberg outside Stockholm, where he also runs his own workshop producing art glass alongside smaller series of functional and lighting pieces.

In 2021 he received a scholarship from the Ulrica Hydman Vallien Foundation, which allowed him to work at Kosta Glasbruk on the body of work later shown as Ad Libitum at Galleri Glas — a solo exhibition described by its curator as leaving “breathing spaces that require the glassblower to work beyond the well-worn grooves of the known.” He previously showed the exhibition Renässans at the same gallery in 2020.