Timo Sarpaneva
| Timo Sarpaneva | |
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Timo Sarpaneva (left) in the 1950s at glassworks.
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| Born |
Timo Tapani Sarpaneva 31 October 1926 Helsinki, Finland |
| Died | 6 October 2006 (aged 79) Helsinki, Finland |
| Resting place | Hietaniemi Cemetery, Helsinki |
| Alma mater | School of Art and Design, Aalto University, Helsinki |
| Occupation | Artist, industrial designer, educator |
| Spouse(s) | Marjatta née Svennevig |
| Children | Polo, Tom, Johanna, Aleksei |
| Awards | Silver Medal – Triennale di Milano 1951 Kukko Lunning Prize 1956 Grand Prix – Triennale di Milano 1957 Exhibition architecture Grand Prix – Triennale di Milano 1957 Glass collection Gold Medal – Concorso Internazionale della Ceramica d'Arte Contemporanea, Faenza 1976 Suomi |
Timo Tapani Sarpaneva (31 October 1926 – 6 October 2006) was an influential Finnish designer, sculptor, and educator best known in the art world for innovative work in glass, which often merged attributes of display art objects with utilitarian designations. While glass remained his most commonly addressed medium, he worked with metal, wood, textiles, and porcelain (china). Sarpaneva has entered homes around the world through his industrial design of upscale, artistically conceived items, including cast-iron cookware and porcelain dinnerware. His work was among the key components that helped to launch Finland's reputation as a trailblazer of design.
As with his grandfather's anvil prominently displayed to introduce visitors to his 2002 retrospective exhibition at the Design Museum in Helsinki, Timo Sarpaneva narrated his family heritage as that of craftsmen. He would mention his maternal grandfather, a blacksmith, whose profession Sarpaneva claimed as his family's tradition "for hundreds of years," and said others were textile artists noting his mother used to make tea cozies. His one-year-older brother Pentti was a graphic designer and made bronze and silver jewelry. With hyperbole, Timo Sarpaneva said he already knew in the womb that he would become a craftsman. His professional response to glass was related to his early memories of molten metal in his grandfather's workshop. A childhood sensation that he would periodically recount later as inspirational for his innovative approach to glass objects spoke of transparency and space:
At the age of eight or nine, I held a piece of ice in my hand until I'd made a hole in it with my warm finger.
Sarpaneva's organic hole in a glass body then appeared at roughly the same time as Henry Moore began to make use of concavities in his human sculptures, and some of his other work with glass is suggestive of that experience.
Sarpaneva graduated from the Institute for Industrial Arts (the forerunner of the University of Arts and Design) in Helsinki in 1948 and received a Ph.D. h.c. later. Shortly after he began to work with glass, he won the Iittala competition in engraved glass and was hired by the company in 1951 (other sources mention the previous year) as a designer and director of exhibitions. He won his first Grand Prix at the 1954 Milan Triennale for his clear glass series, which also went to his already well-established colleague at Iittala, Tapio Wirkkala. In 1956, Sarpaneva embraced colored glass as he developed Iittala's new upscale i-linja (i-line) series of plates, bottles, and other objects. Radical for that time, his involvement extended to the design of the packaging and of Iittala's name with a prominent, white, lower-case letter i in a red circle as the new line's trademark, which the company then adopted as its universal logo through the 21st century.i-linja won him his second Grand Prix at the 1957 Milan Triennale, where he also received a Grand Prix for his design of the Finnish exhibition.
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