Świecznik. Mosiądz. Pierre Forssell (1925-2004). Skultuna. Szwecja.

I bought this small candlestick many years ago at the St. Dominic's Fair in Gdańsk. I must admit that I was motivated by base motives, the desire for profit, encouraged by the seller with a printout from an auction where this candlestick had reached a price that was sky-high for me at the time, and it should be added that this was the beginning of my adventure with design.

I bought it and failed. For many years, no one else liked the candlestick. This was incomprehensible to me because the item is one of the icons of Swedish modernism from the 1960s and 1970s, and connoisseurs are still willing to pay large sums for it at serious auctions. I recently saw a pair of these candlesticks listed on a popular sales platform for €1,300.

The designer, Pierre Forssell, is considered to be the one who revamped the somewhat outdated production lines at the venerable Swedish foundry Skultuna, founded in 1607 by King Charles IX, which has been producing copper and brass products continuously for over four hundred years.

Pierre Forssell started out learning goldsmithing. He was an exceptional craftsman, as at the age of 27 he began teaching the craft at the University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm. At the same time, he carried out his own projects and presented his ideas at the famous H 55 exhibition in Helsingborg. He was associated with Skultuna Meissingsbruk from 1955 to 1986. For a long time, he served as creative director at the foundry. His designs are always economical, simple, and yet very sophisticated and elegant in their simplicity. They allowed Scandinavian modernism to make its mark on European markets.

The candlestick is really small. It is 5 cm high and 10 cm in diameter. The discoloration visible in the photos can be easily polished off, but I left it as a testimony to the passage of time and a personal warning that greed does not pay.