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Sunday, February 27, 2011

Magical mystery score

A few weeks ago, my SIL picked up a pewter tea set and a couple of vases on an online auction. Thanks to an existing sticker, the green piece was quickly identifed as an Orrefors squeeze vase designed by Lena Bergstrom almost 15 years ago. Since it's newer than anything we collect, it will go into the store, where we will primarily sell mid-century furniture, with just a sprinkling of newer items that complement that style. I discovered that the vase normally retails for around $200. We'll price considerably less, so someone will get a good buy on it. The tea set and the other vase remain a mystery.

The bottom of the brown vase isn't marked and any sticker is long gone, so I will probably only identify it by pure chance when I'm researching something else. It looks similar in some ways to the work of several Scandinavian glassmakers, but so far I haven't found an exact match.

The tea set is stamped, but the writing is so small that it's impossible to tell if it says "Magness" or "Hagness." A search turned up pewter pieces under both spellings, so apparently I'm not the only one who's having trouble telling if that tiny stamped letter is an M or an H. I found the identical cream and sugar set on an American site listed as Hagness and selling for $60. On a Scandinavian site, I found pewter listed as Magness, but it had the traditional floral rosemaling, not the geometric design. All I know for sure is that the set was made in Norway.

I searched the Internet for a couple of hours this weekend, and I couldn't turn up information about a company of either name, so for now I've hit a brick wall. If you know anything about the manufacturer or designer of this set, I'd appreciate the information. I could use any help you could offer identifying the brown vase too.

"Magness" or "Hagness" pewter tea set from Norway

Brown mystery vase and its green Orrefors companion

Thank goodness for the occasional sticker that makes identification easy!

5 comments:

  1. Wish I had some answers - but I do like the pattern on the pewter more than a floral.

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    1. I do too. I'm not much of a girly-girl, so florals aren't high on my list for anything. I'm a sucker for anything geometric.

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  2. Oh I love vases! These are beautiful!

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    1. Wow...I just found this comment after almost 3 years. This post was written before we even opened our store. We've expanded twice since then. My, how time flies!

      I'm a vase person too. I was looking at this post because I just found the Orrefors vase in the back of my car. We had taken it to an event that we were staging, and it was in the bottom of a bag that never got brought inside. It was like Christmas morning to find it! :)

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  3. I found the cream and sugar set yesterday at our Goodwill. It had a set of salt and pepper shakers tucked right under the handle. I think that is how the design is . So cool.

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