Exploring Finnish glass design in Riihimäki

Glass museum in Riihimäki is a place where I will return repeatedly. I like glass art very much, and Finland has very strong history of glass designers. The museum is not in Riihimäki by accident: there was located a large glass factory called Riihimäki Glass. It was established in 1810 for the purpose of producing glass for households. In the beginning of the 20^th century, it became the largest glass factory in Finland for which were working many famous Finnish designers such as Henry Ericsson, Alvar Aalto, Gunnel Nyman and Arttu Brummer. Riihimäki factory was manufacturing design glass until 1977, then only glass for packing and shortly after the change of owner, the Riihimäki plant was completely closed in 1990.

Riihimäki is easily approached from Helsinki, by car it´s less than one hour´s drive, and it´s also possible to get there by train. Part of the exhibition is permanent, where one can see designs also from other countries, but Finnish designers dominate. The museum provides a decent collection of main Finnish glass designers. If one doesn´t know anything about Finnish glass art, here one can get a general overview.

Part of the exhibition is temporary. In 2019, I saw there work of Oivo Toikka. His signature creations are glass birds of different colours, sizes, and shapes. For the purpose of the exhibition, there was made a bird observatory from where one can watch with bionoculars Oivo Toikka´s glass birds placed on the other side of the room. Very original! For me it was eye opening how many amazing designs beside birds he made.

Birds of Oivo Toikka

Exhibition of Nanny Still

This time we had a chance to see in Riihimäki museum an exhibition of Nanny Still. She belonged to the golden era of post-war glass makers among whom were for example Timo Sarpaneva, Tapio Wirkkala, Kaj Franck, Erkkitapio Siiroinen, Tamara Aladin and Helena Tynell. Nanny Still´s work was as much good and influential like that of men designers, but accomplishments of male peer designers were much more advertised. Those times were more challenging for women to succeed. Even though there were female designers such as Nanny Still, Tamara Aladin and Helena Tynell who could by their work well compete with men designers, their names have been less prominently appearing in the history of Finnish glass design. When Nanny Still started to work in the Rihimäki Glass, she was only their second woman designer.  

Nanny Still made many great designs of different colours and shapes. Her signature collection is Harlekiini, which is an elegant tableware glass of aquamarine colour. 

Designs of Nanny Still, Harlekiini and Neptuna

I very much like her vases which look like perfume bottles, as well as the collections of simple shapes, clear and purple glass shown below. 

Designs of Nanny Still

Very interesting is also a decorative stick called Juhannussalko. There is a funny story around its name. The manufacture of this object was very difficult for glassmakers, so they were using a derogatory name Juhannussalko for it, referring to the Swedish Midsummer tradition of decorating tree stem with flowers and leaves. This working title became so familiar with the object that it stuck with it. This design in black and red colour combination reminds me of lollipop high heel shoes of the excellent Finnish shoe designer Minna Parikka.

 

Designs of Nanny Still, Juhannussalko in the back behind the vases

There is a nice café in the museum building, which has the possibility of sitting outside. Unfortunately it was closed during our visit on Sunday. We therefore stopped for a light lunch at Ullan Pakari in Riihimäki.