Mid2Mod: Gunnel Nyman

Friday, June 15, 2012

Gunnel Nyman

Gunnel Nyman (1909-1948) was a Finnish glass artist. She began designing for Riihimaki while still a student at the Central School of Industrial Design in Helsinki in the early 1930s. She also started designing for Nuutajarvi Notsjo and Iittala in 1946.

Nyman's untimely death in 1948 while still in her thirties cut short her brilliant career, but in the brief span of years she worked, many believe she defined the essence of the Scandinavian aesthetic for glass. Her influence on Finnish and Swedish designers who followed is inestimable.

The last two years of her career, after she began working for Nuutajarvi and Iittala, were her most intense and productive. Her most famous designs came from this period.

The quality of light as embodied in glass was a major interest for Nyman, as was the instant solidification of the glass mass. She believed that form, proportion and decoration were only necessary insofar as they enhanced the qualities inherent in the glass, so her pieces were simple and elegant. In the early 1930s she began designing bubbled glass objects. By the late 1940s, she had refined this technique and created pieces will small, even-sized and evenly spaced bubbles to form a veil on the inner or outer surface of her pieces.

Nyman was awarded a posthumous gold medal at the 1951 Milan Triennale. Her best known designs include Bridal Veil, Serpentine, Chiffon and String of Pearls vases.

From designed-in-finland.com and abstracta-art.com