(2) Piece Abstract Iittala Finnish Glass Candleholders. Made to fit together along the curving inner lines, with small holes at the top. 

Condition: Great. 

Size: 2 x 2 3/4 x 8 3/4 in. 

In 1881 in the village of Iittalain in the southern province of Finland, a Swedish glassmaker named Peter Magnus Abrahamson left the Nuutajärvi glassworks to found the Iittala Glasbruks Aktiebolag. Due to the lack of skilled glassblowers in Finland, the first 17 glassblowers came from the Limmared glassworks in Sweden. In 1888 Abrahamson left Iittala glassworks and Anders Andersson, the chairman of the board, took over the directorship. By 1895 Anders Norstedt, the former director of the Nuutajärvi glassworks, had become the majority shareholder of the Iittala Glasbruks Aktiebolag, and placed his son Clas Norstedt in charge as the factory manager. He traveled extensively throughout Northern Europe to promote the glassworks, and by 1898 the company expanded so much that a second furnace was built so it could focus entirely on making pharmacy glassware. By 1917 supplies had become scarce due to World War I, and  Norstedt sold the glassworks to Karhula Oy, part of the A. Ahlström Group, a timber refinery. Though Iittala no longer existed as an independent company, Iittala continued to have a separate corporate identity until 1935, when the Iittalan Lasitehdas Osakeyhtiö was formed with the Karhula Company. From then on, products were produced under Karhula-Iittala until 1994, when the Iittala Glassworks gained its independence once more. By the early 1980s Iitalla was Finland’s largest glass exporter, and had 530 employees. In 2004 Iitalla was acquired by a private equity firm, and in 2007 it was consolidated into the Fiskars Corporation portfolio, which it remains a part of to this day.

Great.