Iittala Aalto vase

Aalto Vase. Bizarrely created under the project title "Leather Pants of an Eskimo Woman" in the workshop of architect Alvar Aalto over 70 years ago, these now legendary organic designs for bowls and vases made of glass emerged. Known as "Savoy" vases, they promptly won first prize in a design competition organized by the factory "Karhula-iittala." This competition aimed to select pieces that would represent Finland at the 1937 World Expo in Paris. Today, it is hard to imagine the waves that the "Savoy" vase once made. When iittala presented the vases at the 1937 World Expo in Paris, their mysterious shape stood in stark contrast to the established, machine-production-oriented thinking of the time. Each Aalto vase is still mouth-blown at iittala today. Here, iittala relies on the expertise and knowledge of its skilled craftsmen, who meticulously attend to the individual shape of each flower vase: it passes through no less than seven hands before the vase earns the name of its designer, Alvar Aalto. What inspired the creator to the wave-like shape of his vase objects remains unfathomable – yet it perfectly aligns with Alvar Aalto's general statement that "form is a mystery." The varying prices of the vases arise not only from the different widths and heights of the vase objects but also from the use of special materials and color pigments to maintain transparency.