Tapio Wirkkala

Frozen forms

A pioneer of 20th-century design, Tapio Wirkkala (1915–1985) transformed everyday objects into lasting icons. No other designer captured the northern landscape as a material experience quite like him. His glassworks — carved like wind over snow, melting into glacial textures — seem to hold breath rather than boast.

With Wirkkala, glass forgets its transparency. It thickens, fractures, freezes — like a lake caught in the moment before thaw. His Ultima Thule series, designed in the 1960s for the Finnish company Iittala, does not imitate nature — it distills it. Every ripple, bubble, and edge recalls glacial forms not as decoration, but as memory in solid state.

This is not decorative glassware. It is northern light and water, fossilized. RARE. collects these frozen gestures — moments of landscape, made to be held.

Discover the glass objects designed by Tapio Wirkkala.