My previous post quoted the words of Tapio Wirkkala, the outstanding Finnish artist/designer of the mid/late 20th century. They were displayed in a retrospective exhibition of his work in the Sami Cultural Centre at Inari, a sort of open air museum (closed at this time of year but visited on a previous occasion) beside a building with exhibition spaces, a shop and, most importantly in this part of the world where coffee shops are not on every street (there are no streets), an excellent cafe serving coffee. It is surrounded by landscape and reindeer as illustrated in ‘Signs of silence’.
The exhibition displayed the wide range of Wirkkala’s work, particularly in glass and wood; his output was prodigious using many media to provide for clients wanting, for example, cups and plates for daily use on an airline across to the purest of lines in, for example, an exquisite plywood dish.
