Artek is celebrating the 100th anniversary of Finnish designer Tapio Wirkkala’s birth by re-releasing a set of glass lampshades he designed in the 1960s.
A top figure of the submit-war layout movement in Finland, Wirkkala’s assortment of function integrated glassware, jewellery, sculpture and furnishings, and encompassed each day objects this kind of as stoves, fridges and electrical switches. Between his best-acknowledged projects are the Finlandia vodka bottle and the Finnish markka banknotes from 1955.
To celebrate what would have been his 100th birthday this yr, Finnish furnishings brand Artek is relaunching his K2-140 glass shade.
The coloured diffuser was developed as a single of many developed to cover the WIR-105 diamond-shaped lightbulb – component of the the designer’s TW003 pendant lamp.
Wirkkala, who died in 1985, won the Grand Prix at the 1960 Milan Triennale for the bulb. Artek developed an LED model of the bulb and re-launched the pendant in 2013.
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Shaped like a stretched edition of the bulb, the K2-140 shade is made to demonstrate off the uncommon light supply through its tinted glass surface.
The lampshades will be offered to obtain in grey, blue and amber versions from October 2015.
Initially educated as a sculptor, Wirkkala’s profession as a designer took off soon after the 2nd world war, when he spent time doing work in New York for industrial designer Raymond Loewy.
For the duration of his lifetime he produced styles for organizations which includes Finnair, Iittala and Rosenthal, and served as an artistic director of the University of Arts and Layout in Helsinki for a lot of years.
Artek described him as “an artist of great diversity for whom no materials was alien and who left no region of layout unexplored”.
Artek was set up by Finnish Modernist designer and architect Alvar Aalto, his wife Aino, Maire Gullichsen and Nils-Gustav Hahl “to promote furnishings and to promote a present day culture of living by exhibitions and other educational implies”.
The firm – celebrating its 80th anniversary this yr – was acquired by Swiss furniture brand Vitra in 2013, along with the production facilities utilized by Aalto to create his signature bent-wood furniture a 12 months later.
Artek has given that relaunched a selection of goods by Aalto, as nicely as introducing new collections with designers including Konstantin Grcic and the Bouroullec brothers.
It is the latest Scandinavian business to capitalise on the 100th anniversary of the birth of a renowned Modernist designer. For Danish designer Hans J Wegner’s 100-year celebrations last yr, Carl Hansen & Søn adopted a emblem he created for the brand in 1950 and PP Møbler relaunched a collection of his very best-known types.
