Olaf Skoogfors

Who was Olaf Skoogfors?

Olaf Skoogfors was an artist, metalsmith and educator until his death in 1975. He was born in a backwoods iron center in Sweden, 1930. He and his family came to the United States and settled in Wilmington, Delaware, and later in Philadelphia while he was a small child. He thought he would follow his father's footsteps in engineering. When his family returned to Sweden in 1946, he missed life in the US, returned to Philadelphia on his own and graduated from Olney High School. He continued his education at the Philadelphia Museum School of Art and The School for American Craftsmen in Rochester, New York.

In 1959 Skoogfors established an independent studio in Philadelphia. Shortly after that he joined the faculty at Philadelphia College of Art. Skoogfors felt the most important concern in his work was the technique/means he used to express an image. He worked with assemblages and used imagery from nature. This imagery manifested in texture and surface related to landscapes or sensuous forms of the human body. His intent was to create jewelry incorporating a meaningful statement about form, texture, color, and image. He regarded his jewelry as compositions and the scale was determined by the human body. He embellished his compositions with moonstones and pearls.