KunstenaarFinnishgeb.1943–ov.2021
Kerttu Nurminen
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Autumn forests, blooming wildflowers, cloud formations over the Finnish countryside - these were Kerttu Nurminen's declared sources of inspiration, and they shaped both the forms she gave to mass-produced glassware and the dense, organic textures she built into her unique art pieces. Nature surrounding the village of Nuutajärvi was not a backdrop but a material she translated directly into glass.
Nurminen was born Kerttu Rantanen on 8 March 1943. She trained as a ceramicist at the School of Industrial Design (Taideteollinen oppilaitos) in Helsinki between 1966 and 1970, where Kaj Franck was among her teachers. Franck had long been attached to the Nuutajärvi glass works, and shortly after Nurminen graduated he recruited her to join the factory's design team. Despite training in ceramics, she quickly found her medium in glass and never looked back.
She stayed at Nuutajärvi for 35 years, working alongside Franck, Oiva Toikka, Heikki Orvola, and Inkeri Toikka. As colleagues left and the factory changed hands - becoming part of Iittala - she remained, eventually the last full-time salaried designer on staff. That position suited someone who had consciously avoided the celebrity circuit. Nurminen produced broadly recognised tableware and was content to let the work carry the attention rather than her name.
Her most widely used designs include the Lumme (Waterlily) series of pressed-glass candleholders and vases from 1979, the Mondo drinking glasses and carafes from 1988, and the Verna tableware series from 1998, produced in a wide range of colours and bold forms. She also worked at the more technical end of the craft - developing a dot filigree technique together with her husband, master glassblower Olavi Nurminen, and producing unique pieces in filigree, graal, and veiling techniques. Her Palazzo vase and plate in filigree glass, and the Sonetti sommerso cased glass vase, represent this more experimental strand of her output.
Her work entered the permanent collections of the Design Museum of Finland, the Finnish Glass Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the National Museum of Norway in Oslo, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She received the Finnish State Prize for Design in 1990 and the Kaj Franck Design Prize in 1996, the latter named after her own teacher and recruiter. In 2023, the Iittala Design Museum mounted a retrospective exhibition marking her 80th year.
On Auctionist, Nurminen's work appears across 24 items catalogued primarily under Furniture and Glass. The leading house is Hagelstam and Co in Helsinki with 16 items, followed by Huutokauppa Helander and scattered Nordic houses. Items include art glass pieces signed for Nuutajärvi as well as Verna series tableware. Nurminen died in 2021.