Ulla Gustafsson’s glass products have a dreamily poetic quality in which her fondness for experiment plays an important part. She often works on the basis of an experience, either a shape taken out of its usual context or a surface texture. Her confident workmanship allows her ideas to come to fruition.
Storsjöhyttan – was started in Östersund in the autumn of 1995, the first and only studio glassworks in the county of Jämtland. It is owned and run by three young women bold enough to put their passionate feel for the craft to practical use in a part of Sweden without any glassmaking tradition. In the course of these years they have succeeded in build up a reliable market for their confidently designed glassware.
Nilla Eneroth, Ulla Gustafsson and Anna Lena Kauppi met at the Orrefors school of glassmaking. It was there that they conceived the idea of a glassworks of their own. Their plans began to take shape in Stockholm, where Nilla attended Beckman’s School of Design, Anna Lena worked as an assistant to the glass artist Ulla Forsell and Ulla Gustafsson continued her studies at Stockholm’s Nyckelvik School as well as at the glassworks in Kosta and Gullaskruf, where she worked under the guidance of Peter Kuschinke, among others.
They moved into the electricity authority’s former premises beside the yacht marina in Östersund, where they built up a fully-equipped modern glassworks from scratch. Today this handsome old building houses not only a workshop but also a sales area and a gallery, where food is also served and concerts occasionally take place. Storsjöhyttan has thus become a popular centre for the arts.
