Nuutajärvi Glass Village has a 230-year tradition of glass-blowing!

Finland’s oldest glass village Nuutajärvi is located along the Taikayöntie route. In the year 1793, Major Jacob Wilhelm Depont, son of a glass factory owner and heir to the Nuutajärvi Manor, decided to establish a glass factory in the middle of the forest. The extensive forest resources were a prerequisite for being able to operate the glass furnace, which used enormous amounts of wood. Depont’s interest in the glass factory petered out quickly, and he sold both the factory and the manor to Johan Furuhjelm. During the Furuhjelm era, the manor underwent several reforms, such as construction of the current main building in 1822, but the operations of the factory remained small.

The Furuhjelm family sold the factory and the manor in 1843 to Johan Apagetus Törngren, owner of Laukko Manor. When his son Adolf Törngren inherited the factory and the manor in 1849, life in the glass village started changing.  Adolf Törngren was very interested in developing the operations of the glass factory. He hired a group of German glass-blowers to improve the quality of the production at Nuutajärvi. This marked the start of the development of the Finnish glass factory into a producer that met international standards.

Törngren wanted build a comfortable environment for the arriving German, French and Belgian glass-blowers. He hired the most renowned architect of the time, G.T. von Chiewitz, for the job. In addition, Törngren hired as the accountant and treasurer the German G.F. Stockmann, who would later go on to establish the largest department store in Finland. All of this lead to Nuutajärvi becoming the leading glass factory in Finland by the late 1850s. The very same Törngren also established Tampella, the linen and broadcloth factory in Tampere.

In 1950, the ownership of Nuutajärvi was transferred to Wärtsilä-Yhtymä Oy. The Wärtsilä era and the 1950s marked a rise of Finnish glass art to international fame. The long-time artistic director of the glass factory, Kaj Franc had a significant impact on the development of glass art in Nuutajärvi and in all of Finland. He worked at Nuutajärvi from 1950 until 1976. In addition to Kaj Franck, the village rose to international fame due to other great names of Finnish design, such as Oiva Toikka, Heikki Orvola and Markku Salo.

The Nuutajärvi Glass Village is the most significant Finnish centre for glass art, where the tradition of glass-blowing lives on strongly even today.