Hi David
Glad you like the piece, I've been collecting Orrefors for over 22 year now and not just engraved items and I'm still finding pieces now and again that astound me in the way they were produced and worked on by particular designers and artist engravers alike. The engraving on this particular vase is simply breath taking when you consider its all the result of one mans work on a copper engraving wheel. It isn't that there was a production line of wheel engraver who completed a section and then it was passed onto the next engravers bench and so on. The finished engraved picture was completed by one single artist which in this case was Bertil Gustavssen. I can never imagine in these days that there is a glass engraver who would even contemplate starting, let alone finishing a piece of this grand nature and quality. Some of the cuts involved on this engraving would have to be judged within a thousandth of an inch, one slip and it would all be over. Can you imaging just handling and maneuvering this piece with its great size up to and against the cutting edge of the spinning copper wheel for any length on time, it weighs in access of 4.5kg and the walls of the vase are not the thickest I've seen on a vase this size. All together it tremendous workmanship and definitely something to behold.
Any way David, where in Canada are you based, I only ask because I have close relatives who are now long term naturalised Canadians living there in places just outside Toronto on the lakeside of Lake Ontario, my close cousin Mike and his family live in a place called Unionville, Markham. And more on the West Coast near Vancouver, one has a peach grove up in the Rockies, and another has a boat building business in Whale Town on an island called Cortes, in Vancouver bay.
Regards Den