Saara Hopea-Untracht (1925-1984)
designer of furniture, glass and jewellery
Saara Hopea was born in Porvoo, South Finland, on the 26th of August 1925. After matriculating, she studied at the furniture design department of the Central School of Arts and Crafts in Helsinki from 1943 until 1946. The war years made life difficult and slowed her studies, but upon graduating, Saara Hopea found employment as a furniture designer with the Majander factory in Helsinki. The designer Paavo Tynell, owner of the Taito company, also taught at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, employing talented students as trainees in his office. In 1948, Saara Hopea began work in Tynell’s office, and since she was highly skilled in draughtsmanship, she was given the task of preparing the model drawings of lamps designed by Tynell.
In 1951, Kaj Franck, who had taught Saara Hopea at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, asked her to assist him in designing the Wärtsilä-Arabia corporation’s first showroom at Pohjois-Esplanadi 25 in Helsinki. She also designed furniture for the showroom, such as four-cornered chairs of stained metal tubing upholstered in brown suède. Towards the close of the decade, Franck and Hopea also designed the interior of a new showroom on the fifth floor of the same building. On many occasions, Saara Hopea was also responsible for the exhibition design in the showroom.
In the spring of 1952, Saara Hopea was employed as a designer at the Nuutajärvi glassworks. The Wärtsilä corporation had bought the glassworks in 1950, and Kaj Franck had become the works’ artistic director in the following year. He wanted Saara to come to Nuutajärvi as a glass designer and to collaborate with him in renewing the factory’s products. Oppi Untracht, Saara Hopea’s husband, recalls that Kaj Franck’s and Saara Hopea’s cooperation always proceeded well, and that there was no friction or competition between them. The work was interesting and it produced new ideas. Hopea and Franck also shared the same social and ethical principles as the basis of their work in design. They both wanted to create ”everyday objects of more beauty” for all consumers.
Saara Hopea worked at Nuutajärvi until 1959, designing both manufactured products and one-off items of art glass. Perhaps the best-known mass-produced object was a stackable tumbler, product number 1718, known more commonly as a coloured juice tumbler. The collection also included a pourer. The stackable tumbler was the first of its kind and it reveals the characteristic features of Saara Hopea’s glass design, with uncluttered elegant forms and balanced proportions. Barbro Kulvik-Siltavuori summarizes this aspect by noting that ”there is a restrained tension in Saara Hopea’s forms”. The range of products included tumblers, vases, pourers, candlesticks, cigarette cases for tables, plates and carafes. Of the one-off and serially produced art glass items, we may also mention various crystal vases and the coloured ”Kupla” (Bubble) vases, with a coloured bubble in the clear glass of the base. Saara also designed lidded boxes with silver plate rims. Two of her glass designs received silver prizes at the Milan triennials: stackable tumbler 1718 from 1954 and the ”Flamingo” liqueur glass from 1957. She also designed the impressive gift packages of the glassware.
In 1959 after the death of father, Saara Hopea had to enter the service of Ossian Hopea jewellery firm, which was owned by her family. This marked the beginning of her career in jewellery design. In the late 1950s, she designed large, impressive silver rings differing completely from contemporary Finnish jewellery design. Many of the rings were so large that they covered the whole area between the joints of the finger, and some of them had wide wings. On display at the XII Milan triennial in 1960 was a large silver ring with white coral inlay. These large rings of bold lines were made by hand in small editions at the Ossian Hopea firm, and they remained in production until the late 1970s.
In the summer of 1960, Saara Hopea married the American artisan, photographer and author Oppi Untracht and moved to the United States. Her career gained new dimensions in New York. She had already designed enamel items in 1956 for the Kone ja Silta company of the Wärtsilä corporation, and one of these products was an enamelled spice rack of steel with a steel stand. In New York, Saara was introduced to new techniques of enamelling metal. She developed a technique in which one translucent coating of enamel after another was fired on the surface of the piece, thus creating the desired shade of colour. Between 1960 and 1963, she made hundreds of signed enamelled plates, bowls, vases and mirror frames. They were sold around the United States and some of the items were purchased for the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Enamelled steel panels were a speciality which Saara and Oppi had been invited to make in 1962 as members of a group of enamel designers in New York. These panels were used to decorate the outer and inner walls of modern buildings. After moving to Finland, Saara and Oppi continued to make enamel objects in their spare time, and they were sold at the Ossian Hopea firm and the Stockmann department store in Helsinki, among other outlets.
In Finland, Saara Hopea had made a large number of various straw mobiles (originally a traditional Finnish Christmas decoration) for friends and family, and for public facilities, such as the Arabia showroom. She also made special Easter straw mobiles, and the late 1950s the mobile became an element of interior design. She continued to develop this idea in New York, making mobiles of plastic, steel and brass instead of straw. ”Gothic Cathedral” is a mobile made of hundreds of small black brass tubes joined with thin steel wire.
Saara and Oppi Untracht travelled a great deal. They came to know Mexico, and lived in Nepal from 1963 to 1965, followed by two years in India. The influence of the cultures and atmosphere of these countries was later reflected in Saara’s jewellery and textile design. The couple moved to Porvoo in 1967, and Saara Hopea-Untracht continued to design jewellery for the family jewellery firm. The materials were silver and gold, and spectrolite or other semiprecious stones were set in the pieces. In many works, Saara would also use pearls, coral, amber and shell either individually or in various combinations. Around 1977, she began to design hand-knitted gold and silver chains that were influenced by ancient Nepalese and Indian necklaces. Saara Hopea designed a total of 90 different jewellery pieces between 1967 and 1982, while also being responsible for many practical duties in the management of the Ossian Hopea firm.
Specially commissioned jewellery by Saara Hopea includes the chains of office of the mayor of Porvoo (1967) and a pendant for the traditional Lucia Maiden (1973). A collection of jewellery by Saara Hopea to be specially sold by Marimekko was completed in 1983, containing a silver heart pendant, a bracelet and earrings. All these items share a convex form, dark finish and bright silver thread bordering the piece. The jewellery was made by the Tillander company of Helsinki.
Saara mostly made colourful textiles with an obvious oriental influence for her own use or for friends. They included embroidered textiles, appliquéd pillowcases and large, colourful patchwork quilts.
Beginning in the 1950s, Saara Hopea-Untracht participated in dozens of international and domestic exhibitions organized by the Finnish Society of Crafts and Design, as well as group exhibitions by the designers of the Arabia and Nuutajärvi factories. Her glass designs were awarded the silver medal at the Milan triennials of 1954 and 1957. She received the Cultural Prize of the City of Porvoo in 1981, and the State Design Prize in 1982. A retrospective of her life’s work was held in 1987 at the Museum of Applied Art (present-day Design Museum) in Helsinki.
Auli Suortti-Vuorio
Bibliography:
Untracht, Oppi. Saara Hopea-Untracht. Elämä ja työ. Life and Work. Porvoo 1988.
Enbom, Carla, Saara Hopea-Untracht in retrospect. A feeling for form, colour and proportion. Form Function Finland 4/1987.
Koivisto, Kaisa, Kolme tarinaa lasista. Lasitutkimuksia – Glassresearch XIII. Vammala 2001.
Nuutajärvi 200 vuotta suomalaista lasia. Toim. Tuula Poutasuo. Oy Hackman Ab. Tampere 1993.
Photos:
Portrait: Oppi Untracht
Vase, 1954, Nuutajärvi Glassworks. Photo Pf-Studio / Design Museum
Stackable drinking glasses, 1951-52, Nuutajärvi Glassworks. Photo Pietinen / Design Museum
Rings, 1960, silver, white corals, Ossian Hopea. Photo Pietinen / Design Museum
Packaging for wine glasses
White wine glasses "Traviata" with packaging, 1958, clear glass with green stem, Nuutajärvi Glassworks. Photo Pietinen / Design Museum
