I’m a huge fan of Alvar Aalto but strangely enough do not yet own anything by the great man. My favourite object by him is the Aalto vase, or Savoy vase as it is more commonly known.
Designed in 1936 by the Finnish designer as a competition entry for the Karhula-Iittala glassworks factory (now known as Iitalla), the vase was used as a custom piece for the luxury Savoy restaurant in Helsinki which opened one year later in 1937. Aalto also designed a range of other items for the restaurant. The restaurant still stands strong today as does the vase.
The vase was first shown to the world in 1937 at the Paris World’s Fair and went on to be sold in the thousands by Iitalla. The shape of the vase has always been under much discussion, many people feeling that it was inspired by the dress of the Sami women in northern Finland, and others saying that it is linked to Aalto’s name translating into English as “wave”. More likely is the theory that Aalto based this shape on the Finnish lakes that he grew up around.
Modern design company, Droog created an updated version of the vase with a sustainability message attached – showing the effect of global-warming on the lakes in Finland that are said to have inspired the vase.
Images taken from a post at Treehugger.com
The vase was not an easy object to manufacture, and Aalto experimented with many different methods, from pushing wooden sticks into the ground and moulding glass around this and allowing it to set, but this produced inconsistent results and would not lend itself for mass-production. Later, wood was used again as a method by creating a mould in the shape of the vase and allowing the wood to slowly burn away. This must’ve been an incredibly expensive and time-consuming method to produce each vase as a new mould was needed for each vase.
Aalto never made a penny from the design of the vase, despite all of this effort, as it was submitted as a competition entry and therefore belonged entirely to Iitalla. It is regarding as a design classic to this day and all official versions of the vase are etched on the base with the words ‘ALVAR AALTO IITTALA’. Despite modern methods of producing this vase making it easier to get perfect, consistent results each time, Iitalla still produce a version of the vase using the original method with visible seams and larger versions of the vase as Aalto had intended but without seams.
With a vase that has been around for 74 years there have been many photographs of it in many uses and it doesn’t take long to search Flickr and find people showing off their prized possession. See a full search list here. However, my favourite is this one, where someone has used it as a goldfish bowl:
Nowadays, the company Iitalla is owned by the great company Fiskars who are famous for their ‘everyday classic’ Fiskar scissors… you know the ones with the orange handles. Two great design classics under one roof, what could be better than that.
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