As with his grandfather's anvil prominently displayed to introduce visitors to his 2002 retrospective exhibition at the Design Museum in Helsinki,[3] Timo Sarpaneva narrated his family heritage as that of craftsmen.

He would mention his maternal grandfather, a blacksmith, whose profession Sarpaneva claimed as his family's tradition "for hundreds of years," and said others were textile artists[4] noting his mother used to make tea cozies.

[5] A childhood sensation that he would periodically recount later as inspirational for his innovative approach to glass objects spoke of transparency and space: At the age of eight or nine, I held a piece of ice in my hand until I'd made a hole in it with my warm finger.

Radical for that time, his involvement extended to the design of the packaging and of Iittala's name with a prominent, white, lower-case letter i in a red circle as the new line's trademark, which the company then adopted as its universal logo through the 21st century.

In the meantime, he worked on his English at the newly opened Helsinki branch of Berlitz International in the second half of the 1950s,[11] soon began to teach at his alma mater, including a course in linoleum block printing for students of textile design,[12] and became full professor in 1976.

[22] Work like Sarpaneva's proved that the intrinsic quality of materials reduced to their most basic, sensuous essence, shaped by the creative imagination of an artist, beat all the kitsch in the world.

[23] Sarpaneva thought the turning point in his career came for him at the age of 22 when he received the second prize in the Riihimäki Glass Design Contest – second only to his college professor, Arttu Brummer, who won the top award.

[3] Sarpaneva worked intermittently with metal, wood, textiles, ceramics, and porcelain (china), while glass remained his main medium from his earliest awards for much of his life, both in industrial design and in display art objects.

[3] Nevertheless, Sarpaneva's international career opened up with a comparable feat in textile design when he received a Silver Medal at the 1951 Milan Triennale for his submission Kukko, an embroidered tea cozy styled as a rooster (hence its Finnish name) with the bird's serrated red comb as its handle, mistaken by some at the exhibition for a carnival hat.

Close to 2,000 automated machine settings, which Sarpaneva called "industrial monotypes," enabled extensive variation in color schemes, from intense crimson and turquoise to subtle pea green, cream, and black.

Blurring, merging, and distortion resulted in fluid psychedelic patterns and added another layer to the number of options the modified two-sided rotary printing opened for its manufacturers and marketers.

Ambiente attracted international attention, provoking Andy Warhol to jokingly suggest to Sarpaneva that he should sell the line as unique pieces of art, adding that "you would be a millionaire".

The originally all-white modern classic with gently rounded corners[30] was made part of the permanent collection of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris as an example of contemporary design[31] and has remained in production through the 2010s.

Big, comfortable handles made the cups sturdy and easy to hold, rims on the plates prevented spills, tea and coffee pots poured without dripping.

[32] Still in the 1970s, Rosenthal made Suomi the canvass for high-art surface designs limited to 500-set runs by artists renowned at the time, including Salvador Dalí and Victor Vasarely.

It manufactured Suomi in a parallel Porcelaine noire series and allowed customers to mix and purchase the luminous white and uncommon black-porcelain pieces in any desired contrastive combination.

[34] Such marketing was not always appreciated on aesthetic grounds with the argument that the decorated versions of various sorts related poorly to Sarpaneva's refined shapes, and that Suomi was extraordinary only in plain white.

[44] Sarpaneva made his and Finland's largest glass sculpture, Ahtojää ("Pack Ice," renamed from Jäävuori, "Iceberg"), for the Finnish pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal in 1967.

[54] Bargain hunters occasionally reported high returns, including the purchase of a Sarpaneva glass plate for 25 cents in a garage sale, which turned out to have a resale value of US$1,000.