Holmegaard Since 1825: Two Centuries of Danish Glassmaking
From peat-fired green bottles in 1825 to Regina, Flora and Minima: how Holmegaard became the house of Danish mouth blown glass over two hundred years.
Holmegaard has been making glass in Denmark for two hundred years, and 2025 marked the anniversary. This piece follows how a glassworks built to burn peat on a Zealand estate became a house for modern Danish design, using four pieces from different eras as markers along the way.
A glassworks fired by peat
The story begins with a fuel problem. In the early nineteenth century the forests on the Holmegaard estate in southern Zealand could no longer feed a furnace, but the estate had something else in quantity: the Holmegaard bog, deep with peat. Count Christian Danneskiold-Samsøe had planned to put that peat to work in a glassworks, and after his death his widow, Countess Henriette Danneskiold-Samsøe, carried the plan through. Holmegaard Glasværk was founded in 1825 at Fensmark, near Næstved, with peat cut from the bog firing the furnaces.
The first products were plain and practical: green bottles. Nothing about them was meant to be admired. They were containers for a country that needed glass, and making them well, in volume, gave the works its craft base. Glassblowers learned to gather, blow and shape by hand, and that skill passed from one generation of workers to the next. It is the same basic process that still shapes much of the range today.
The choice of founder matters to the story too. A woman running an industrial enterprise in the 1820s was unusual, and Holmegaard has always placed Countess Henriette at the start of its history rather than in a footnote.
From bottles to the table
Over the following century the works moved from bottles towards drinking glasses and household glass, and from anonymous production towards named design. The decisive figure of the twentieth century was Per Lütken, who joined Holmegaard in 1942 and remained its leading designer until his death in 1998. Fifty-six years is an extraordinary span for one designer at one company, and it shaped the house more than any single product could.
Lütken worked closely with the blowers rather than handing over finished drawings. His glass tends towards soft, organic outlines that come from the way hot glass behaves on the pipe: it swells, slumps and thins, and he let those movements stay visible. That attitude is still the key to reading a Holmegaard piece. Slight asymmetry, small changes in wall thickness and the occasional bubble in a stem are treated as evidence of the process rather than as faults.
In 1965 Holmegaard merged with Kastrup Glasværk, the other major Danish glassworks, and later became part of what is now Rosendahl Design Group. The name and the mouth-blown tradition carried on through those changes. If you want to see how that process works on a single range, our piece on how Idéelle glass is mouth blown walks through it step by step.
Regina, 1992: a glass made for a royal anniversary
By the late twentieth century Holmegaard was the natural place to turn for a national occasion. The Regina Red Wine Glass 28 cl clear was designed by Anja Kjær as a Silver Wedding anniversary gift to the Danish Queen and the Prince Consort in 1992. A gift of that kind had to be formal without being heavy, and Regina answers with a tall, fine stem and a gently rounded bowl.
The red wine glass stands 19.5 cm tall, with a diameter of 8 cm and a volume of 0.28 L. It is mouth blown, so no two are quite identical. What began as a ceremonial design grew into an extensive range, with white wine, champagne and port glasses alongside tumblers, which is why Regina is often the glass people choose when they want one set to cover a whole dinner. It is not dishwasher safe; hand washing keeps the thin rim and stem in good order.
Light and flowers: the DWL Lantern and the Flora vase
In more recent decades Holmegaard has invited designers to treat glass as something for the whole home, not only the table. Two pieces show the range of that thinking.
The DWL Lantern H29 cm clear, from the Design with Light series by Maria Berntsen, is a portable light source in mouth blown glass and full-grain leather. The leather handle is the telling detail: it turns a glass cylinder into something you carry from the table to the steps, the windowsill or the floor. This version is 29 cm tall with a diameter of 17 cm, and the series also comes in smaller sizes and a floor version, in clear or frosted glass. It works through the year, with a candle on a summer terrace or with cones and fir sprigs at Christmas.
Louise Campbell's Flora range starts from a practical observation: cut flowers need water, and a narrow vase rarely holds enough. The Flora Vase medium neck H24 cm smoke has a spacious, rounded base that carries plenty of it and gives the vase a solid footing, then rises to a slender mouth that holds long stems upright. It is 24 cm tall with a diameter of 17 cm and weighs 1.78 kg, so it stands firmly even with a heavy branch in it. The smoke colour softens the water line and the stems inside, which suits sparse arrangements of one or two stems.
Minima and the modern Danish table
Cecilie Manz's Minima range brings the story full circle, back to the bottle. The Minima Bottle with lid 90 cl clear is a tall, narrow vessel in fine glass, 26.5 cm high with a diameter of 9 cm, sized to fit a refrigerator door without taking over the shelf. A tight-fitting lid keeps water, juice or a smoothie fresh and stops flavours passing between the bottle and the rest of the fridge. At the table it does the job of a carafe without needing a separate jug.
The Minima range won the Danish Design Award 2008/2009 for the way it combines Scandinavian modernism with everyday function. Unlike the mouth blown pieces above, the bottle is dishwasher safe at a maximum of 55°C on a glass programme, which makes it the easiest of the four to live with daily.
Four pieces, four ways into two centuries
Set side by side, the four designs trace how Holmegaard's idea of glass has widened while the core craft has stayed in place.
| Piece | Designer | Material | Size | What it shows |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Regina red wine glass | Anja Kjær | Mouth blown glass | H 19.5 cm, 0.28 L | Ceremonial glass made for a royal anniversary in 1992 |
| DWL Lantern H29 | Maria Berntsen | Mouth blown glass, leather | H 29 cm, Ø 17 cm | Glass as portable light for indoors and out |
| Flora vase, medium neck | Louise Campbell | Mouth blown glass | H 24 cm, Ø 17 cm | Form led by what flowers need |
| Minima bottle with lid | Cecilie Manz | Fine glass | H 26.5 cm, 0.9 L | A return to the bottle, in modern everyday form |
A practical note for anyone choosing between them: the mouth blown pieces (Regina, DWL and Flora) vary slightly in weight and capacity from one to the next, and they prefer hand washing and gradual changes in temperature. Minima is the one to choose if it will go through the dishwasher every day. For a first Holmegaard piece with real history behind it, Regina is the clearest link to the house's role in Danish life; for something used every morning, Minima earns its place fastest.
Two hundred years after the first green bottles left Fensmark, the range covers drinking glass, vases, lanterns and storage, but the habits of the works are recognisable throughout. You can explore the rest of it, from everyday tumblers to sculptural vases, in the Holmegaard collection.
