One of Sweden’s longest-established glassmakers is facing what could be a landmark legal challenge over €1m in royalties it has allegedly failed to pay to the creator of one its most famous pieces, in a test of an EU-wide “bestseller” right that was brought in to strengthen cultural creators against producers and publishers.
Cloudy of hue and with a rustic texture that breaks the flickering tealight inside, the “snowball” glass lantern is a classic item of Swedish household design, as ubiquitous in the Nordic country’s homes as the Billy bookcase. With more than 15m sold worldwide, it has also been a reliable money-spinner for its manufacturer, Kosta Boda.
Yet the sculptor Ann Wolff, whom the company credits as the inventor the snöbollen, has not seen a penny for her design classic since the mid-1980s, due to the time-limited contract she signed with the glassmaking company in the 1970s. Fifty years after she came up with her design, the Swedish visual artists organisation KRO is now suing Kosta Boda for unfair remuneration.
German-born Wolff, 86, started working for companies in southern Sweden’s “kingdom of crystal” in the late 1960s, joining Kosta Boda on an individual part-time contract in 1972. Her snowball-shaped candle holder was the end result of a year of formal experimentation, during which she blew glass into snowdrifts to see how the material reacted. The final design was made from a clay model that Wolff then used to form an iron mould to cast the glass.
“It’s a design that felt both warm and cold at the same time, a bit of yin and a bit of yang,” Wolff recalled. “I felt it was an experiment that had potential, but I never expected it to be become such a massive hit.”
As the snowball gained momentum as a bestseller, Wolff earned 2% in royalties for each sale of the glass lantern, allowing her to expand her practice and eventually resign from the company to set up her own studio. But in June 1984, Kosta Boda informed her in a two-sentence letter that her copyright for the snowball had expired after 10 years, as used to be common for works of applied art in Sweden.
It wasn’t until Wolff read about a change in Swedish copyright law at the start of this year that she came up with the idea of approaching the manufacturer about retrospective pay for her design. “I thought, that sounds interesting, maybe we can get something off the ground,” she said. Her proposal to the company was to use the unpaid royalties to set up a joint prize or fellowship for young female glassmaking artists, marking the 50th anniversary of the iconic design.
But Kosta Boda, now part of the New Wave Group, a conglomerate with a turnover of 9bn Swedish krona (€806m) in 2022, showed no interest in her proposal. After a meeting between Wolff and Kosta Boda’s CEO later in the year, the company instead offered her a lump-sum payment of 400,000 krona and 4% in royalties on further sales. In return, they wanted permission to also produce the transparent candle holder in yellow, blue and red.
This time Wolff passed on the offer. “It was out of the question, because snowballs aren’t red,” she said. “If we make a deal, it should be a fair one.” According to her lawyer’s estimates, the sculptor would have earned between 10m and 15m krona if she had continued to received 2% in royalties on every one of the 15m snowball lanterns sold, which would still have been a relatively low cut by contemporary standards.
The change in Sweden’s copyright law that triggered the dispute was the result of a 2019 EU directive designed to allow artistic creators to seek retrospective compensation for works that have become unexpected bestsellers.
With considerable delay, the new copyright law has, as of the end of this year, been implemented into national legislation of most of the 27 member states, though the extent to which it can be applied varies from country to country. In Sweden, where the bestseller clause introduced a new principle into national copyright law, it only allows artists to retrospectively claim back royalties for a limited period.
In an email to the Guardian, Kosta Boda said it could not comment on the specifics of the royalties dispute due to the pending court case, but highlighted the fact that Sweden’s version of the bestseller clause “explicitly only applies to agreements entered on 1 January 2003 or later”.
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“We have the outmost respect for Ms Wolff – her contributions for Kosta Boda and beyond – and will await the verdict of the competent Swedish courts,” said Filip Trulsson, Kosta Boda’s chief commercial officer.
Lawyers acting on Wolff’s behalf, however, argue that the bestseller clause has established a principle that highlights the unfairness of the agreement that Kosta Boda made her sign in 1972.
“A major change in the Swedish copyright law in 1961 meant that works of applied arts have since enjoyed the same copyright protection as other works, today lasting for 70 years after the death of the author,” said Katarina Renman Claesson, a lawyer for KRO who is advising Wolff’s lawsuit. “Yet even though Ann Wolff signed her contract with Kosta Boda in 1972, the company argues that the pre-1960 law applies in this case.”
In Sweden, a country known not just for its glassware and ceramics but its furniture and interior design, a victory for the claimant in the legal snowball fight could trigger an avalanche of similar cases.
“Sweden is a small country, and few if any of the individual designers creating really successful designed products have the financial resources to challenge unfair clauses and contracts in a cases against big companies,” added Renman Claesson. “So there is great interest in this case.”
