Holmegaard Carneval Set

Kastrup-Holmegaard, Denmark, 1970 · Empordà Golf Club, Gualta

Holmegaard Carneval is a series of art glass designed by Christel Holmgren-Exner and launched in 1970: clear glass carrying bands of red and blue. This find is three pieces of it - an oval vase and two candleholders, one in each of the colourways the catalogue lists.

Dealers often spell the name Carnival. The series has nothing to do with carnival glass, the pressed glass with an iridescent sheen made mostly in America from the early twentieth century.

Two candleholders

In the Kastrup-Holmegaard catalogue of 1967–73 the Carneval candleholder is 110 mm tall and comes in two versions: red with a blue foot, number 79 06 00, and blue with a red foot, 79 06 18. A label on a candleholder documented by the Danish reference site hardernet.dk names them more simply: rød ring, blå ring - red ring, blue ring.

Here the two stand side by side. Each has a wide bowl with the colour low in it, a clear knop, a coloured stem and a round foot; in the middle of each bowl is a small round hollow. They are easy to take for coupes. The Carneval wine glass is another shape: a rounder bowl on a short stem.

The vase

The catalogue lists three oval vases. The smallest, 150 mm, comes in two colourways: two blue bands and one red, or two red and one blue. This vase is blue, red, blue, with a clear arch rising from the base, and matches that smallest form.

Hand-painted

The factory called Carneval hand-painted, håndmalet. How exactly the colour went into the glass, no source read for these notes explains. The bands differ from piece to piece: in this vase the red rises and falls like a wave.

Hardernet.dk has weighed two vases of this form: 1,020 and 1,485 grams, almost half a kilogram apart. The site counts each Carneval piece as almost a one-off.

The labels

The vase and the blue candleholder still carry a round gold label: a crown, a swan and the words Kastrup Holmegaard. Holmegaard merged with Kastrup Glasværk in 1965, and the label carries both names. On the candleholder's red stem it is partly torn away.

Some Carneval pieces are engraved on the base "Holmegaard CHE" - the designer's initials - often with a number. Many were left unsigned.

The designer

Christel Holmgren-Exner was born in Austria in 1940 and came to Denmark in 1962. She designed for Holmegaard until 1970, then ran a design studio in Næstved with Christer Holmgren. Carneval was launched on 21 August 1970, at first under the name Phantasy. The catalogue credits "Christer Holmgren-Exner" - a misprint that runs her name into her colleague's.

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Photograph: MYT', Empordà.

Sources: Kastrup-Holmegaard catalogue 1967–73 and Carneval records, via hardernet.dk; Trap Danmark, Holmegaard Glasværk; Wikipedia, Carnival glass.