The artist, who spent most of his life in his house in Lapland, did his work at a time when his native country needed the world's attention the most. The designer blazed a trail for himself, as Scandinavian design was still in its infancy after World War II. However, the companies that commissioned him caught on to the strangely named hermit, whose pieces are now sought after by collectors. The story of Tapio Wirkkala follows.
Born in 1915 in the port city of Hanko in southern Finland, the artist's parents were also creative people: his father mostly designed cemetery monuments, and his mother worked as a woodcarver, so it was perhaps natural that all three of their children would enter such a career and engage in art. The teenager Tapio studied sculpture in Helsinki. In his clean, modern aesthetic, it is easy to detect the natural inspiration that accompanies his entire oeuvre; the icy northern Finnish countryside inspired many of his works - for example, the vodka bottle he designed for Finland.
He graduated in 1936 and immediately started working for an advertising agency, and also entered design competitions. He won two of them: he designed a knife for the Finnish army made of boot leather, telephone wire and deer antlers. His other project was a monument to a victory of the Finnish troops, which he also played a part in in a different way, as he himself was drafted in 1939, which of course interrupted his professional career. The reward was a longer leave from the front, so he was able to attend the party where he met the ceramic artist Rut Bryk, his future wife, whom he married in 1945. They had two children, who also became artists when they grew up.
At the forefront of the Finnish design movement
Wirkkala began designing functional objects in the late 1940s, when Scandinavian design was still in its infancy. The war had had a devastating impact on Finland, and the economy had to be rebuilt from the ground up, and the government saw design and industrial production as a good starting point for this. Wirkkala took a job at the Iittala glass factory in 1946, where his first big breakthrough was made that same year: the Kantarelli (Chanterelle) glass vase. The product was presented in Milan and was a great international success. In 1947, the designer also tried his hand at graphic design: he won a tender from the National Bank of Finland, so his drawings were now used to print the new banknotes.
The next big success was the 1951 Milan Triennale, where he won the grand prize for his laminated wood, leaf-shaped bowls, and the American magazine House Beautiful declared them the most beautiful objects of the year. In 1951, he was invited back to his former school as art director, but the following year he received another great recognition: he designed the official stamps of the Helsinki Olympics. In 1954, he coordinated the Finnish appearance at the Milan Triennale, and that same year his works were also shown in a traveling exhibition in the United States. There was nothing to be done, world fame was almost knocking on his door.
Tapio Wirkkala, the Northern European world star
It is difficult to list the important milestones of his work, but first of all, let us mention that in 1956 he became a freelancer. He designed for the Rosenthal porcelain factory, received the Pro Finlandia commemorative medal, and in 1958 he was asked to conduct the Finnish pavilion at the Brussels World's Fair. He also won awards there, and his works subsequently went on a tour of South America. It seemed that nothing stood in the way of international exhibitions and honors, but let us highlight one of them: the British Royal College of Art recognized him as an honorary artist of applied arts, and later as a doctor. Between 1968 and 1973, he also served as chairman of the Finnish government's committee on applied arts, and around this time he stopped working. Of course, there was no need to worry, one of the greatest prides of the Finns still won quite a few state awards.
