Helena Tynell 'Kaulus' Bowl

An engraved 'Kaulus' bowl, designed by Helena Tynell for Riihimäen Lasi Oy, Finland, c.1950. 

Helena Tynell is famous for her bold and colourful 'Pop-Art' designs of the mid-1960s - a range of cheerful and widely collected works that made a significant and enduring impact on the Scandinavian homewares scene. The foundations of an artist's success, however, are often best understood through their earliest works, which reveal the first stirrings of character and style.

Designed in 1950, this elegant 'Kaulus' (Collar) bowl comes from a period when Tynell was exploring surface decoration and graphic engravings on organic, hand-blown forms. Strongly influenced by the Organic Modernism movement, this piece evokes a simplified, abstract flower emerging from Finland’s forests.

Expertly handmade from clear, bluish glass, this refined object takes the form of a simple cylinder topped with a wide, splayed rim. The rim is adorned with a rhythmic pattern of vertical stripes which have been meticulously engraved into the glass surface.

In relation to Tynell’s later works, this early 'Kaulus' bowl demonstrates her consistently strong and dramatic sense of silhouette, even in its more understated form. The beautifully swooping and enlarged rim not only gives the piece its name, "Collar," but also reveals Tynell's emerging perception of Modernity - a sensibility that would later be expressed through bold colour and exuberant forms.