Blown Glass Vase

Alvar Aalto’s Savoy Vase gained its name from a luxury restaurant in Helsinki by the same name, which placed one at every table. Additionally, Aalto entered the design into a competition sponsored by the Karhula-Ittala glassworks factory. Aalto won the competition, and ten of his designs (including the Savoy vase) were exhibited in the Summer of 1937 at the Paris World’s Fair.

The undulating lines vase relate to Aalto’s influential experiments with bent plywood. Creating the process by which the vases were formed from wooden molds helped form the blown glass.

Photograph by John Russo.