A new wind is blowing through Finnish and Swedish glass

Glass and Northern European countries share a long love affair. Finland and Sweden, first and foremost, cultivate the art of glassmaking in remote regions where the craft of glassblowing has existed for over 300 years. Despite industrial transformations, the know-how has endured, and artisans have managed to juggle the production of high-quality utilitarian objects with cutting-edge artistic creation, through collaborations with leading designers.

Since the 1930s, the Scandinavian aesthetic, with its pure lines, has seduced the strongholds of design, from Milan to Paris, and has gradually made its way into the kitchens and living rooms of Southern Europeans. The great names of design, Alvar Aalto and Tapio Wirkkala, - who designed collections for the renowned Iittala glassworks (founded in 1881 north of Helsinki) - have always had the mantra: "making beauty accessible to all" . These masters of the glass industry are today...