AROUND HOME : Notes on Quilts, Savoy Vases and Oriental Rugs : Savoy Vase

ALVAR AALTO was a renegade. Like the other pioneering modernists of the early 20th Century, the Finnish architect rejected the busily ornamental styles of his childhood, such as art nouveau. Yet while his peers cited rationalist dogma--a house is “a machine for living in,” said Le Corbusier; “form follows function,” said Mies van der Rohe--Aalto (1898-1976) let nature be his guide.

One has only to visit Villa Mairea in Noormarkku (1939), Aalto’s largest private house, to sense his obsession with organic forms.

The cutout in the fireplace, for instance, resembles an amoeba, the library windows weave in and out like a Gargantuan tapeworm, and the swimming pool presages California’s faddish kidney-shaped pools of the ‘50s.

Aalto’s furnishings of the period restate those motifs on a more intimate scale. Aalto found glass, which molds easily into fluid forms, a particularly congenial medium.

In 1936, his entry in a competition sponsored by the Finnish glass manufacturer Karhula-Italla took first prize. He called it Eskimoerindens Skinnbuxa (Eskimo’s leather pants), but it became known as the Savoy vase, after the restaurant in Turku, Finland, for which it was designed.

The Savoy’s curvilinear free-form base and straight sides evoke the contours of a sparkling northern lake. Yet Aalto was a hardheaded technician as well as a romantic, and his design adapted readily to economical mass production.

Italla still offers the vase in several sizes and clear, opal or cobalt glass. For the vase’s 50th anniversary, Italla issued an edition in the original green crystal that looks as fresh as the day it was minted. Like nature itself, Aalto’s primeval forms never outstay their welcome.

Alvar Aalto’s Savoy vase is available at Contempo Westwood in Westwood, Malibu Art & Design in Malibu, Montana Mercantile in Santa Monica, Finlandia of South Pasadena and Bo Danica in La Jolla. Prices range from $125 to $1,250, depending on size.