Holmegaard - two hundred years of Danish glass

Fensmark, Denmark · since 1825

How do you recognise Holmegaard glass? Often by its colour, before anyone turns the piece over: white opal glass inside a coloured skin, or clear glass with colour running through it in bands. Then the questions start. Who designed it, and when? Is it Holmegaard at all?

Holmegaard made glass at Fensmark, near Næstved on the Danish island of Zealand. Founded in 1825, it was one of Denmark's oldest glassworks; from 1990 it was the only one left. When the works closed in 2008, forty-five tonnes of molten glass were left to set inside the furnace.

The name did not end there. The brand has belonged to Rosendahl since 2008, and since then Holmegaard glass has been made mostly outside Denmark. The old works became a museum, Holmegaard Værk, where glassblowers are at work again.

A glassworks on a bog

In 1823 Count Christian Danneskiold-Samsøe applied for leave to build a glassworks at Holmegaard Bog. He died the same year. His widow, Countess Henriette Danneskiold-Samsøe, received the licence and built it.

The place was chosen for fuel. Glass furnaces burn day and night, and the bog had peat: for nearly a hundred years it kept the furnaces going.

The first day of production is counted as 5 November 1825. At first the works made only cheap green and brown bottles. In 1835 Bohemian glassworkers arrived, experts in clear glass, and wine glasses and coloured glass followed. A glass town grew round the furnaces, with workers' houses, a school, a shop and a Catholic chapel.

In 1965 Holmegaard merged with Kastrup Glasværk; in 1985 it became part of Royal Copenhagen.

What makes Holmegaard different?

01. Designers on staff

From the 1920s Holmegaard kept an artistic director. The other Danish glassworks did so only in the 1950s. With designers of its own, Holmegaard could meet foreign glassworks with forms of its own - for ordinary tables and for the royal court.

02. Made with the glassmakers

The glass was blown by mouth, much of it into moulds of wood, clay or iron. Per Lütken, the longest-serving of the designers, never blew glass himself. He worked beside the glassmakers and tried out what hot glass would do: glass blown into a wet clay mould, glass flung outwards by spinning. His bowl Arne of 1955, sold since 1982 as Provence, is "self-blown": the steam from a wet plate, pressed against the hot glass, blows it up.

A catalogue of the 1970s put it plainly: "Handblown and handmade by men who know their craft."

03. Colour in layers

Much of Holmegaard's colour lies in layers. In cased glass - overfang in Danish - one glass is pulled over another while hot, so the colours sit one on top of the other. White opal glass was a speciality of the works, and in the 1960s and 70s it was often the inner layer: white inside, colour over it, clear glass outside.

The designers who shaped Holmegaard

Jacob E. Bang, artistic director 1928–1941 His services Viol, of 1928, and Primula, of 1930, ran to fifty-four and a hundred pieces. Later he led design at Kastrup.

Per Lütken, 1942–1998 Lütken arrived at twenty-five, without having worked with glass, and led design for fifty-six years, until his death. He designed well over three thousand glasses, from everyday drinking glasses to unique pieces. It is above all his glass that became known abroad, and his that Danes associate with Holmegaard.

Otto Brauer A master glassblower. His tall floor vase, the Gulvvase, a variant of a Lütken form, was first made at the glassworks in Odense - in clear glass and in colours cased with white.

Michael Bang, from 1968 Jacob E. Bang's son. His Palet range of kitchen and table glass, from about 1970, is opal glass cased in colour.

Christer Holmgren and Christel Holmgren-Exner Christer Holmgren, born in Malmö, added forms to Carnaby. Christel Holmgren-Exner, born in Austria in 1940, designed Carneval. After Holmegaard the two ran a design studio in Næstved.

For a collector the name changes the object. A cased vase is not simply "Holmegaard". It may be a Lütken, a Brauer, a Bang or a Holmgren, and the name brings its period, its series and often its price.

Carneval, 1970

Dealers usually write Carnival. Holmegaard's catalogue spells it Carneval. The series was designed by Christel Holmgren-Exner and launched on 21 August 1970 as art glass, at first under the name Phantasy. The catalogue of 1967–73 credits "Christer Holmgren-Exner" - a misprint that runs her name into her colleague's.

Clear glass carries bands of red and blue. The factory called them hand-painted, håndmalet; how exactly the colour was laid on, no source read for these notes explains. No two pieces have the same bands, and a Danish reference collection counts each almost as a one-off.

The range was wide for an art series: oval vases in three heights, a decanter, wine glasses, tumblers, a punch bowl with cups and a ladle, an ashtray, a bonbonnière, a candleholder.

The Carneval pieces at MYT' are a vase and two candleholders. The vase - blue, red, blue, with a clear arch rising from the base - matches the smallest of the three oval vases in the catalogue. The two stemmed pieces are the candleholder, in both versions the catalogue lists: red with a blue foot, and blue with a red foot. They are easy to take for coupes. The Carneval wine glass is a different shape, a rounder bowl on a short stem.

Carnaby, 1968

Two years earlier came Carnaby. Per Lütken designed fifteen vases for it, and Christer Holmgren added a few forms. In the words of the Danish encyclopaedia Den Store Danske, its colours and forms followed the language of pop art. The glass has three layers: white opal inside, a layer of colour, clear glass outside. The catalogues list blue, yellow, coral and white; from 1969 there was also a transparent ruby red. It was made at Fyens Glasværk in Odense until 1976.

Most forms open into a flared lip that shows the white inside. Carnaby is usually unsigned; it is known by its form, its layers and, sometimes, a round paper label with a crown. The coloured glass balls often seen on top of Carnaby vases were designed by Michael Bang and made at the same glassworks. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne both hold Carnaby vases.

How to recognise Holmegaard

Signatures. Art pieces and some series were engraved on the base: "Holmegaard", often with a year, the designer's initials and a number. A unique Per Lütken vase of 1984 reads "HG 84 PL 3337"; a Carneval punch bowl, "Holmegaard CHE 95". Signing was never consistent, and much serial glass was not signed at all.

Labels. Paper labels with a crown: "Kastrup Holmegaard" after the merger of 1965, and in the 1970s "Holmegaard of Copenhagen", with the royal warrant. A Kastrup label on a Holmegaard design is not a mistake: from 1965 the two works were one company.

Catalogue numbers. Each form had a number. 79 06 00 is the Carneval candleholder, red with a blue foot; 79 06 18 is the blue one with a red foot. The catalogue sheet leads from the form to the name, the designer and the year.

Lookalikes. Opal glass in strong colours was made elsewhere too. Auction houses catalogue some lots as "in the manner of" Carnaby, and even museum records have mixed up Carnaby with Otto Brauer's floor vase.

Why some pieces cost more

There is no single Holmegaard price.

Designer and kind of piece. Lütken made both everyday glass and unique pieces. A signed, numbered unique vase and a serial one belong to different markets.

Colour. Colour can make the difference. In 2021 eight vases by Otto Brauer - clear, opal white, red, orange, yellow and light blue - sold for €4,000 at Quittenbaum. In 2023 seven of his vases in clear, white and mustard yellow sold at the same house for €520.

Sets and history. In 2022 two Carnaby sets, five vases and a jug each, shown in the touring exhibition Denmark: Design, sold for £1,875 apiece at Lyon & Turnbull.

Signature and label. An engraved mark or an original label makes a piece easier to place and to trust.

Condition. Chips, scratches, a worn base. And cloudiness: when it is in the glass itself - collectors call it sick glass - it cannot be cleaned out.

From €70 to four figures

A new Provence bowl, Lütken's design of 1955, costs from €69.95 in Holmegaard's shop; some colours are blown again at the old works, in the museum Holmegaard Værk.

Vintage pieces are another market. In July 2020 seven of Lütken's Drop vases from about 1960 sold at Wright in Chicago for $6,250, against an estimate of $1,500–2,000. In April 2026 a unique Lütken vase, blown into a wet clay mould, sold at auction for €1,105. Single serial pieces mostly sell for far less.

So when a Holmegaard vase is priced high or low, the useful question is not "Why this price?" but "What is this piece?" Who designed it, and when? Is it unique or serial, signed or labelled? Was the series made in this colour? What condition is it in?

A glassworks that stopped, a record that stayed

Blenko, in West Virginia, still blows glass in the town where it began. The great tank furnace at Fensmark has been cold since 2008. What Holmegaard left is a record.

At Holmegaard Værk, the museum in the old buildings since 2020, more than 42,000 pieces of glass stand on shelves seven metres high and forty metres wide. Their core is the works' own sample collection, with glass from the Kastrup, Fyens and Hellerup works beside it. Glassblowers work there again on museum days. In 2022 it was named European Museum of the Year for environmental sustainability.

That makes Holmegaard rewarding to research. A coloured vase on a market stall may carry no mark at all. Its form leads to a catalogue sheet. The sheet gives a number, a designer and a year. The year places it in a series, and the series has its place on those shelves in Fensmark.

And the object has a history.

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Sources: Den Store Danske (lex.dk) - Holmegaard Glasværk, Per Lütken, Jacob E. Bang, Michael Bang, Holmegaards Mose; Trap Danmark, Holmegaard Glasværk; Museum Sydøstdanmark, Holmegaard Værk; Kastrup-Holmegaard catalogues 1967–73, March 1969 and 1973–76, via hardernet.dk; Mother Sweden, "An Overview of Per Lütken's Carnaby Series"; Victoria and Albert Museum; National Gallery of Victoria; Rosendahl, Holmegaard; American Cut Glass Association, "About Sick Glass", 1986; Wright, 16 July 2020; Quittenbaum, 3 March 2021 and 11 October 2023; Lyon & Turnbull, 29 April 2022; Auctionet, 2026.