Cocktail Shaker with Rosewood Lid Cocktail Shaker, 1966

Tapio Wirkkala was one of Finland’s best-known designers of the postwar period, with works spanning a number of media and disciplines. Though perhaps best-known for his designs for glass, wood, and graphic commissions, metals played an important role in his oeuvre. He worked in bronze, pewter, and silver, and his essays included jewelry and medals as well as cutlery and barware. His experiments in metal began with ornamental silver objects; these more decorative pieces ultimately gave way to more utilitarian objects rendered in silver, typically produced serially. Wirkkala’s TW 177 cocktail shaker is one of over 600 designs he produced for the firm Kultakeskus Oy, Finland’s largest precious metals company. In the 1950s, a decade before the shaker was designed, there had been a tempering of the early twentieth-century’s strict functionalism, a reactionary proclivity that found inspiration in the undulating, vegetal forms of the art nouveau. At the same time, the increasing importance of industrial design and the influence of Russian Constructivism were permeating Finnish design. This curious blend of the organic and the “hard-edge” found expression in Wirkkala’s TW 177 cocktail shaker; the cylindrical volume, void of any embellishment, swells elegantly outward to create a sharp horizontal striation before diminishing again near the object’s top, a circular rosewood lid. The shaker’s symmetry is interrupted only by its spout, a simple tube of sterling grafted onto the object just above its jutting shoulder. In general, the Finnish crafts from this period were geared towards elite consumers; it is thus befitting that Wirkkala’s serially-produced TW 177 shaker be executed in sterling silver and exotic rosewood even if its general character is that of a simple storage canister. This piece therefore encapsulates the seemingly disparate influences on Finnish design in the 1960s, and speaks to Wirkkala’s sensitivity to both form and material.

Cocktail Shaker with Rosewood Lid Cocktail Shaker, 1966; Designed by Tapio Wirkkala (Finnish, 1915 - 1985); Manufactured by Kultakeskus Oy; silver, rosewood; H x W x D (overall): 26.5 × 12.5 × 9.5 cm (10 7/16 × 4 15/16 × 3 3/4 in.) H x W x D (shaker): 24.5 × 12.5 × 9.5 cm (9 5/8 × 4 15/16 × 3 3/4 in.) H x diam. (lid): 3 × 5.5 cm (1 3/16 × 2 3/16 in.); Gift of George R. Kravis II; 2018-22-92