This heavy, cast bronze chalice, with its scumbled exterior and projecting crystal, contrasts starkly with the smooth, lightweight paten. The artist’s design choices reflect the taste of the era, in which stylish interiors featured combinations of bold colors and varied textures, and middle-class homes sported long-fibered “shag” carpeting and sleek Scandinavian-style furniture. The chalice’s nubby and distressed surface relates to fiber arts, then an ascendant craft medium, and gives a nod to similar accomplishments by such abstract sculptors of the period as Theodore Roszak, Seymour Lipton, and Herbert Ferber. Olaf Skoogfors often incorporated precious stones into his abstract jewelry compositions. This ecclesiastical service marks an occasion in which the artist applied his jeweler’s aesthetic to hollowware.
This text has been adapted from "Silver of the Americas, 1600-2000," edited by Jeannine Falino and Gerald W.R. Ward, published in 2008 by the MFA. Complete references can be found in that publication.

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