Glass
Sarpaneva's first international recognition in glass work came with a Grand Prix from the Milan Triennale in 1954 that included Sarpaneva's series Orkidea ("Orchid"), Kajakki ("Kayak"), and Lansetti ("Lancet") adopted for production by Iittala. He said of his favorite material:
Glass is very mysterious. It's changing all the time. That's what makes it magical. It released me from the conventional and the three-dimensional. It opened its deepest reaches to me and took me on a journey to a fourth dimension. I understood the opportunities that clear, transparent glass gives to an artist and designer.
The amoeboid abstraction "Lancet II" of the latter series, an asymmetrical clear-glass vase whose shape is only partly echoed by its hollow center, was selected by the U.S. magazine House Beautiful as "The Most Beautuful Design Object of the Year" 1954. At his hands distinctions between pure and applied art gradually became less and less meaningful – the glass vases he created in the 1950s exhibited clear sculptural qualities long before he decided to sever his connection with the vessel as a form in 1964 and to make pure sculpture in glass.
Read more about this topic: Timo Sarpaneva
Famous quotes containing the word glass:
“When you’re thirsty and it seems that you could drink the entire ocean—that’s faith; when you start to drink and finish only a glass or two—that’s science.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“Each day I live in a glass room
Unless I break it with the thrusting
Of my senses and pass through
The splintered walls to the great landscape.”
—Mervyn Peake (1911–1968)
“A glass of papaya juice
and back to work. My heart is in my
pocket, it is Poems by Pierre Reverdy.”
—Frank O’Hara (1926–1966)