TW002 Triennale Pendant Lamp by Tapio Wirkkala for Artek, 2000s

Designer and sculptor Tapio Wirkkala was born in Hanko, Finland in 1915. During the 1920s, he moved with his family to Helsinki, where he went on to study ornamental sculpture at the Central School of Arts and Crafts from 1933 to 1936. Best known for furniture and glassware pieces, his output was prolific—he designed sculptural wooden bowls, plywood objects, silver pieces (most notably for Christofle), exhibition pavilions (including the Finnish installations at the 1951 and 1954 Milan Triennales, for which he earned the Grand Prix on both occasions), and everyday items such as banknotes and cutlery. During his career, Wirkkala also designed glass for  and porcelain for Rosenthal. His earlier designs embraced the utilitarian beauty of Finnish Functionalism, but from the 1950s drew inspiration from natural forms.

In 1946, Wirkkala entered a glass design competition organized by Iittala, and shared first prize with Kaj Franck. In 1947, he became the artistic director of Finnish glass factory Iittala Glassworks; his relationship with the company would continue throughout his lifetime. Between 1955 and 1956, Wirkkala worked for industrial designer Raymond Loewy in New York. In 1956, he became artistic director of A-Studio, the design studio of A. Ahlström in Helsinki. In 1966, he established his own studio, Design Tapio Wirkkala.

Wirkkala’s work has been exhibited broadly and is included in esteemed collections around the world, including the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, both New York; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich; the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm; the Royal Museum, Edinburgh; and the Corning Museum of Glass, in Corning, New York.

Wirkkala passed away in Helsinki in 1985.

Finnish architects Alvar (1898-1976) and Aino Aalto (1894-1949), married in 1925, were early proponents of modernism in Scandinavia. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, they began to develop designs, from buildings and interiors to furniture and objects, characterized by innovative, streamlined forms and state-of-the-art materials and processes. The Aaltos’ work—as expressed, for example, in the curvilinear, bent plywood Paimio Chair, created for their Paimio Tuberculosis Sanatoriam (1928-1933)—quickly came to be seen among the international design cognoscenti as a humanistic antidote to the “cold” steel-and-glass designs associated with German, Bauhausian modernism. Following a series of successful exhibitions abroad, especially at Milan’s influential Triennale expo in 1933, the Aaltos and their furniture were in high demand. In 1935, with the help of art critic and future CEO Nils-Gustav Hahl (1904-1941) and art patron Maire Gullichsen (1907-1990), the Aaltos launched Artek in Helsinki, not only to sell and market their furniture, but also “to promote a modern culture of living by exhibitions and other educational means.”

Until the 1950s, the Aaltos designed most of Artek’s products—most notably their Stool 60 (1933), Screen 100 (1936), Tea Trolley 901 (1936), and Stool Y61 (1947). In the years after the war, however, the brand began collaborating with impressive Finnish designers like Ilmari Tapiovaara, whose Mademoiselle Chairs (1956) are still a best-seller today; and Tapio Wirkkala, whose ’60s-era glass pendants were put back into production in recent years. Artek’s collaborations in the 21st-century have included major international designers like Konstantin Grcic, Hella Jongerius, and the Bouroullec Brothers. In 2007, the company commissioned Japanese architect Shigeru Ban to design a pavilion; titled The Space of Silence, the project travelled to multiple destinations around the globe.

Since 2013, Artek has been owned by the German brand Vitra, with offices in Helsinki, Berlin, Stockholm, Tokyo, and New York. Artek’s designs are included in institutional collections around the world, including New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Weil am Rhein’s Vitra Design Museum, and London Design Museum, as well as The Alvar Aalto Museum in Jyväskylä and Helsinki.

* All images courtesy of Artek