Finally!!!

Finally, my vacation has started! The last couple of weeks have been murder. It's always like that before the summer vacation, everybody want their projects done and the applications for building permits ready... Trying to stay creative and design some goodlooking buildings amidst the chaos is a challenge.  I'm totally worn out like an old dish rag, and I don't think I can yet fully grasp the fact that I now have a few weeks off. It's gonna be lovely! This year we're off to Italy in a couple of days, to cruise along the Ligurian coast for a couple of weeks. Then, of course, we'll spend some time in Stavanger. I haven't been able to enjoy all your gorgeous blogs lately, but I will catch up!

I celebrated my freedom today by hitting a couple of charity stores:-) and I found some great stuff. I'll start with these fat lava planters. They're larger than the Bay planters I've found earlier, which is great. They're not marked, but they have to be german. I love the combination of orangy red and brown.

Next things I found are these lovely Iittala Senaatori (Senator) champagne glasses by Timo Sarpaneva. Notice the base? Exactly the same design as the Festivo. I actually thought these glasses were from the Festivo series, as I know the design for the famous candle holders started out as an idea for a large wine glass. They're really elegant. I found two, and have to keep looking for them. I might actually "inaugurate" them tomorrow when my husband comes home from Tokyo to celebrate that the vacation has started:-)

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you've probably noticed that I collect Stavangerflint Brunette. I love the color, the pattern and the simplicity of this Kåre Berven Fjeldsaa design from the 60s. Today, I found two medium sized bowls. I have quite a few serving pieces, and use them all the time, they're so versatile.

I have a Haldensleben vase that I found some time ago with a pattern that I really love. Today I found it's companion, a beautiful bowl from that same series. It's unmarked, but it has the exact same design. The vase has the same dark grey color inside it that's on the outside of the bowl. The pattern is really gorgeous, and works really well with the circular shape. Isn't it great? There's a lot of the WG vases around, but I really enjoy finding bowls. I have one from Scheurich too that I love to bits, you can see it here.

Speaking of west german pottery, one of my Scheurich vases also got a companion today, a vase in a different shape, the kind that looks a bit like a hand granate...

 

Finally, I found some Stavangerflint Sera by Inger Waage. It's one of my favorite Stavangerflint designs, I love the colors and the very distinct 60s graphics. I got 4 sets of coffee cups with saucers and small plates, plus two extra plates. The cups are perfect for espresso, which I love after dinner.

That's this weekends catch! I don't quite know how many of the little italian pensiones that will have internet access, there just might be some "radio silence" here. Don't worry, though, I'll be back! In the meantime, I wish all of you an amazing summer! (for those of you in Europe and the western hemisphere) For you guys down under- stay warm!

Festivo - more finnish gorgeousness

I have a thing for icy cool finnish glass, and this week has been very rewarding in that respect. I found some gorgeous Ultima Thule glasses, featured in my previous post, and now these! Remember I mentioned in a recent post that the lady in my nearby thriftstore had reserved something for me that just needed to be unpacked from all her boxes? That was four Festivo candle holders in two different sizes. Or at least I thought it was... When I popped by a few days ago, she was really sorry about having discovered they were copies. I was so disappointed, but bless her for not trying to convince me they were originals. However, yesterday, I found two specimen of the genuine article- they're even signed! Sadly there are many copies around. Over here, I often see the kind that are too regular and don't have that special icy expression at all. The real ones have a rougher surface and look more "individual". If you're lucky, like I was this time, you'll find the older ones that have Sarpaneva's initials TS etched under the base. I highly recommend you to check out this post over at RetroScandinavian if you wanna make sure you're getting the real deal. It's a really great blog, by the way, a great resource on Scandinavian pottery and glass.

I want to collect a whole group in different heights, like in this great retro Iittala ad I found. It must date from the early years, maybe even from the time they were launched. The retro typeface is so cool. Aren't they gorgeous in a large group like that? The tall ones are hard to find, we'll see how that goes... My mom has a pair with one ring that my dad bought for her on a business trip to Helsinki in the early 70s. She confessed to me a little while ago that she's never liked them, and wants me to have them. She wants to break it to my dad gently, though, she never told him she didn't like them... For the record; my dad doesn't read my blog!

I guess many of you are well acquainted with Festivo and the amazing Timo Sarpaneva, but if you're not- let me introduce you! The story goes that designer Timo Sarpaneva originally designed the Festivo candle holder as a wine glass for himself. The idea was to fit an entire bottle of wine into a single glass. A rough-surfaced, ice-like glass was born, with the bowl and base sections blown separately. When the base sections of the glasses were sitting in the factory on their own, the idea came to use them as candle holders – and so the prototype of a new classic was born. The Festivo series has been manufactured since 1967 and has become a true icon.

Timo Sarpaneva came from a family of craftsmen. He would mention his maternal grandfather, a blacksmith, whose profession Sarpaneva claimed as his family's tradition "for hundreds of years," and said others were textile artists noting his mother used to make tea cozies. His one-year-older brother Pentti was a graphic designer and made the most amazing brutalist bronze and silver jewelry.

Timo Sarpaneva's professional response to glass was related to his early memories of molten metal in his grandfather's workshop. A childhood sensation that he would periodically recount later as inspirational for his innovative approach to glass objects spoke of transparency and space:

"At the age of eight or nine, I held a piece of ice in my hand until I'd made a hole in it with my warm finger."

His organic hole in a glass body then appeared at roughly the same time as Henry Moore began to make use of concavities in his human sculptures, and some of his other work with glass is suggestive of that experience.

Sarpaneva graduated from the Institute for Industrial Arts (the forerunner of the University of Arts and Design in Helsinki in 1948 and received a PhD later. Shortly after he began to work with glass. He was hired by Iittala in 1951. Radical for that time, his involvement extended to the design of the packaging and of Iittala's name with a prominent, white, lower-case letter i in a red circle as the new line's trademark, which the company then adopted as its universal logo through the 21st century.

Sarpaneva's first international recognition in glass work came with a Grand Prix from the Milan Triennale  in 1954 that included Sarpaneva's series Orkidea ("Orchid"), Kajakki ("Kayak"), and Lansetti ("Lancet") adopted for production by Iittala.

Trained as a graphic designer, he spent the majority of his life in industrial design while seeing himself more as an artist than a designer. During his amazing career, he created great designs in glass, porcelain, fabric and cast iron, to name a few. However, glass was always closest to his heart. He said of his favorite material:

"Glass is very mysterious. It's changing all the time. That's what makes it magical. It released me from the conventional and the three-dimensional. It opened its deepest reaches to me and took me on a journey to a fourth dimension. I understood the opportunities that clear, transparent glass gives to an artist and designer."

Glass, gorgeous glass...

Inspired by Dana's post about the wonderful effect of glass, over at Mid2Mod, I'll throw in a few of my own mid- century glass favorites from Norway and Finland.

The Festivo- line of candle holders were designed by finnish artist Timo Sarpaneva in 1966. I remember when my dad arrived from a business trip to Helsinki with a couple of these as a gift for my mom some time in the seventies.

 

 

I guess I'm a hopeless nostalgic, I find myself drawn to stuff from my childhood, things that bring out fond memories. This bowl and plate from the "Greenland"- line by norwegian artist Arne Jon Jutrem was on my mom's coffee table.

What I always regarded as a typical 70s design actually date from the mid fifties. Designed for Norwegian manufacturer Hadeland, the line won a gold medal at the "Triennale di Milano" in 1954. The pieces are really heavy, and are characterized by the myriad of bubbles in the emerald green glass.

 

 

I love the Ultima Thule line! Tapio Wirkkola designed these gorgeous pieces for ittala in 1968, and they are still in production. When this design was unveiled in the 1960s, it represented something new in the glass industry and contributed to Iittala’s international breakthrough.

Thousands of hours were spent to perfect the glass-blowing technique that’s required for the ultima thule collection, whose unique pattern is created when the molten glass burns into the surface of the wooden molds. The resemblance to ice is striking, when the sun shines through the glass it glows like wet, melting ice. Oh my goodness... I've managed to get my hands on 4 dessert bowls (have a look here), but I'm constantly on the lookout for more pieces. The decanter is truly gorgeous and very high on my wish list!