Bacchus Antik: Part II - Art Glass

Bacchus Antik – A Series of Themed Auctions
Bacchus Antik is the title for a series of ongoing themed auctions this autumn and spring, where large parts of Bacchus Antik’s rich and diverse inventory will go under the hammer. Owner Michael Strömquist has decided to scale back, and at Formstad Auktioner we are both proud and delighted to present these auctions in close collaboration with Bacchus Antik.
Bacchus Antik has long held a unique position among Stockholm’s antique dealers. The shop was established in Stockholm in 1994, after seven years in Kivik on Österlen, and has become a true meeting place for anyone interested in 20th-century design and decorative arts. It is the kind of place where one can step inside and immediately find oneself discussing anything from Danish lamps to Berndt Friberg’s exquisite ceramics. The shop has also served as a school of sorts for many aspiring collectors and dealers.
The atmosphere is refreshingly unpretentious. Exclusive design classics stand side by side with vinyl records in plastic crates. This coexistence between the everyday and the distinguished is rare in Stockholm, and part of what makes anyone who steps inside feel instantly at home. Perhaps this has to do with the owner himself always keeping his feet firmly on the ground. His father was an ICA grocer, as were his grandparents, who each ran their own store, one in Tommarp and the other in Gärsnäs. From that side of the family came the sense for buying and selling, while the love for objects themselves was shaped at home by his mother. When the choice was between a new teak table and an old farmhouse table, the latter always won – because that’s what she wanted.
Michael inherited the best of both worlds and became an antique dealer almost by destiny – one who acquired through his own passion, and who insists on “looking properly” at an object before letting it leave the shop. Some items, he admits, he still hasn’t finished looking at. “I was born a collector,” he says. “In a way, the shop is my collection. As a child I collected everything – film stars, matchboxes, spent rockets, movie tickets, coins, Merry bottle caps… I kept everything that was nice.”
Now, a significant part of all these “nice things” will be offered at auction, for you to bring home and look at yourself. It is a unique opportunity – one that will never come again.

Part II – Swedish Art Glass
Swedish art glass has from the very beginning been an essential part of the selection at Bacchus Antiques. Even the name of the shop – Bacchus – has its roots in glass art, explains Michael Strömqvist:
– I’ve always thought Simon Gate’s bowl Bacchus Procession is just wonderful, with its dancing figures pulling a wine barrel behind them. It felt only natural to name the shop after that piece.
The magnificent bowl Bacchus Procession drew great attention in Paris in 1925, at the World’s Fair that marked the birth of Art Deco, and it played a decisive role in establishing the international reputation of Swedish glass.
In addition to the engraved glass of the 1920s – primarily by Simon Gate and Edward Hald – Strömqvist is particularly fond of the Graal and Ariel glass techniques.
– Everyone used to talk about Graal glass, with its coloured patterns enclosed within the glass – and they are truly beautiful – but I’ve always liked the Ariel glass just as much. Artists like Edvin Öhrström used air bubbles in the glass in such a refined way. Not many people cared about those pieces back in the 1980s and 1990s, but today many, like me, think Ariel glass is every bit as beautiful as the Graal pieces.
Among the highlights of this themed auction are works dating from the 1920s onwards by glass artists such as Vicke Lindstrand, Eva Englund, Simon Gate, Edward Hald, Ingeborg Lundin, and Edvin Öhrström, among others.