Milla Vaahtera's Follow the Bloom exhibition brings a fairy-tale garden to the Finnish Glass Museum

The Finnish Glass Museum is opening an exhibition by Milla Vaahtera, which takes visitors to a fairy-tale garden. The exhibition features mobiles, sculptures and lamps made of glass, brass and enamel.

Artist and designer Milla Vaahtera (b. 1981) is known especially for her mobiles, sculptures and lamps made of glass and brass. The multidisciplinary artist's production also includes public artworks, furniture and serving dishes. The dialogue between glass and brass was first seen in Vaahtera's work in 2017 in the Dialogue series.

Vaahtera's works are situated on the border between design, art and craft. They also build connections with the surrounding space. The exhibition architect for the exhibition at the Finnish Glass Museum is Hanna Anonen.

Brass and enamel flowers, glass berries and fruits that are at once simplistic and fairy-tale-like exaggerated. In the exhibition space, you can sense a hint of the comfortingly sleepy atmosphere of a garden preparing for winter. The garden also emerges as a model of thought or utopia: a place where things could be different. Milla Vaahtera is known as an active advocate of fine arts and design. The play of form and material opens up new vistas for a new kind of flourishing of fine arts and crafts, for thinking that challenges disposable consumer culture and for believing in the power of imperfect, handmade objects and works of art.

The exhibition features Vaahtera's new works, mobiles, sculptures and lamps. The works have been created in collaboration with glassblowers from Nuutajärvi. Vaahtera has designed the delicate and sculptural ATLAS lamps for the renovated premises and new extension of the National Museum of Finland in collaboration with JKMM Architects. The exhibition also features ATLAS lamps and their prototypes.

The exhibition opens at the Finnish Glass Museum on October 3, 2026 and ends on December 31, 2026.