Lundgren Monuments is the collaboration between two professional glass artists, Jim Nelsen and Greg Lundgren. Jim Nelsen is the founder of Seattle Stained Glass Inc., Seattle’s largest and most diverse custom glass studio. He holds forty years of art glass experience and knowledge, ranging from fabrication and repair to custom design and historical restoration. Under his direction, Seattle Stained Glass has multiplied in size and scale of projects, employees the finest traditional glass craftsman and produces an array of custom glass projects for commercial, liturgical and private clients.

Greg Lundgren is a Seattle-based artist and designer with a diverse background in furniture, theatric and architectural design. As the head designer at Seattle Stained Glass, his confidence in architectural theory and contemporary design lead to a great diversity of projects and clients. Together, Nelsen and Lundgren designed and produced projects for Disney, Paramount Pictures, Burberrys of London, Marshal Fields, Neiman Marcus, AT&T, Microsoft and a broad range of commercial and private clients. Their combined experience and desire to expand the horizons of architectural glass lead to glass casting, and soon they were producing large-scale cast glass slabs for use in sculptural walls, windows, doors and floors. Each new project inspired conversations about how incredibly beautiful and rugged cast glass was, and the seemingly endless applications it contained.

Since cast glass and granite held so many similar properties, a healthy portion of their commissions reflected as a deliberate alternative to granite. The question soon became, “What else can we make out of glass that is traditionally made out of stone?” When Lundgren was commissioned to design the sanctuary windows of a local cemetery, he could not help but notice the hundreds upon hundreds of granite memorials. Within weeks, Lundgren and Nelsen had cast their first glass memorial. After two years of research and experimentation, Lundgren Monuments debuted its line of cast glass memorials at the 2004 National Funeral Directors Association’s annual convention in Nashville, Tennessee.