9 Factory Road
In my practice, I almost always start from a sense of place. I believe this has to do with my background. I studied interior architecture and furniture design at Konstfack in Stockholm. There I was taught to always take the room as a point of departure—even when designing objects. The place adds meaning, both through practical needs and through its craft traditions. Things are made differently in different places. I have seen this in all types of production, but perhaps most clearly in glassmaking. Having had the privilege to work with the material in various contexts around the world, I’ve learned—and been fascinated by—the fact that glass is approached completely differently in the Czech Republic, the U.S., Sweden, Italy, Taiwan, or Finland. What is entirely natural in one place is incomprehensible in another.
Where things are made, things are also invented. Some of these inventions are closely guarded secrets to create competitive advantages, while others spread and reappear elsewhere in new contexts. That transformation that occurs when something is removed from its origin and placed into a new setting is yet another dimension of a place’s significance—or rather, the importance of exchange between places and traditions. In the transition from one place to another, something truly authentic often emerges, where curiosity and sometimes a lack of knowledge distill an original essence that I find completely irresistible.
One such place is Factory Road in the village of Iittala, some 20 kilometers north of Hämeenlinna in Finland. The identity of the place is its glassworks, and at number 9 you’ll find its beating heart. This is where the melting furnaces are located, where the glassblowers work, and where glass is made in a way no one else has managed to replicate. Iittala’s production is unique in terms of quality, expression, and methods. Its distinctiveness is largely due to this specific place being so open to external influences. Attuned to the world beyond, the glassworks has drawn in inspiration with an open eye. Iittala is wholly Finnish but also very international, with impulses brought here by designers, craftsmen, and engineers who have been active since the glassworks was founded in 1881.
Its golden age began with Alvar and Aino Aalto in the 1930s and was carried forward by names like Tapio Wirkkala and Timo Sarpaneva, who earned Iittala a worldwide reputation in the glass world with designs that received numerous international awards. When the nearby Nuutajärvi glassworks became part of Iittala, designers like Kaj Franck and Oiva Toikka became part of the narrative. Toikka, in particular, embodied the transformation of international influence into something utterly Finnish. The vitality and energy in his work are rooted in Murano and its Venetian glass techniques—but were reassembled into something radically new. They could never have originated anywhere else. If you visit Iittala or Nuutajärvi, you and your experiences become one with the place.
My own journey with Iittala began in 2008, when I was invited to design glass birds as relatives to the famous birds Toikka had been developing since the early 1970s. He, in turn, based the motif on his predecessor and mentor Kaj Franck’s bird designs. Continuing that tradition was both an honor and somewhat surreal, especially as Oiva was working in the hot shop at the same time, and I got to closely observe his artistry and relationship with glass. Those impressions have stayed with me and have influenced how I approach my own work today. Over the years, I have returned to the Iittala factory for various assignments, and through these visits, a quiet friendship has formed—with the place and the people—many of whom are depicted in the photos I’ve taken to document the things we’ve made together.
Now, 17 years later, when I’ve been generously given the opportunity to work independently in the company’s hot shop, countless memories have returned.
Memory also became central to the artistic work. I ended up working with motifs I had developed even before my first visit to Iittala—motifs that, in a way, opened the doors there. Now I had the chance to charge those form worlds with a new expression that feels both more refined and somehow rawer, more direct. Perhaps also with more confidence than the projects I undertook with glass as my younger self. My personality is such that I always seek out new paths, while admiring artistic practices who spend a lifetime exploring the same subject. Maybe that’s why it’s been good to return to something and linger for a while?
The result, now shown in my first solo exhibition at Galleri Glas in Stockholm, turned out to be something different. And that, of course, is due to the place where I’ve been able to work and reflect. It’s also because of the space where the work is now exhibited. The project has involved a close dialogue with Anna Bromberg Sehlberg and Elin Forsberg at the gallery—about the objects themselves, the theme of the exhibition, and how the space that surrounds it should be designed.
My first exhibitions with glass as a focal point took place just around the corner, at Galleri IngerMolin, and that exploratory phase concluded in 2011—around the same time my projects in Finland intensified and my work took a slightly new direction. Galleri Glas, despite its geographic proximity, offers a new and completely different context. This has been crucial for realizing the project and rekindling my curiosity about art glass. It doesn’t feel like I’m returning to something, but rather that I’m closing one door and opening another.
It’s been allowed to take time. My first meeting with Galleri Glas happened just over two years ago, followed by more than a year of traveling back and forth across the Baltic Sea. Slowly, something quite distinctive emerged in collaboration with master glassblowers Tero Vällimaa and Arto Vilkki. Behind the scenes, my brother Simon has also been present. We’ve collaborated in many ways over the years, and we have a unique dialogue when we meet in his hot shop. There’s a lightness in our collaboration that I’ve carried with me—in the form of objects and samples to continue developing, but perhaps even more as an attitude. Over time, the dialogue in Iittala has come more and more to resemble the one I have with my brother.
In the pictures taken throughout the years at the factory in Iittala, Tero and Arto – like many others around me in the hot shop – appear as younger reflections of themselves. Now, with this project I return with the camera to document a new process, a new mark on the timeline, where also new faces, new hands and new acquaintances from Fabriksvägen 9 are being added to my album.
For inquiries please contact Galleri Glas.
