Design March 2015: French and Icelandic design collective Iiif has designed Petits Volcans, a glassware collection comprising five vessels that represent different types and stages of volcano.
The ReykjavÃk and Copenhagen based studio, which comprises Agla Stefánsdóttir, Sigrún Halla Unnarsdóttir and Thibaut Allgayer, collaborated with French glass blowing centre CIAV on the project.
Together, they created five designs based on the submarine volcano, the dormant volcano, the subglacial eruption, the lava eruption and the crater lake.
Iceland has an extremely high density of active volcanos, and an eruption in the 1700s is thought to have killed around a quarter of the country's population. In 2010, eruptions from Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull caused widespread disruption for air travel in Europe.
"We wanted to tell an Icelandic story," Allgayer told Dezeen. "We loved the parallel between glass and lava and its similarity in fusion. Telling stories is central to Icelandic culture – and this can be seen in the Icelandic design culture as well."
Each product was made by two glass blowers working simultaneously, each responsible for one part of the product. The two parts are combined at the optimal temperature, completing the form.
The Submarine Volcano Bowl references underwater vents in the earth’s surface from which molten magma can erupt. An open blue-tinted bowl, representing the sea, sits on a red ball-shaped base, representing the molten rock.
"In the production a big ball of glowing red glass is pushed into the base of the transparent blue bowl," said the designers. "This contact expresses the tension and pressure from the magma underneath."
A similar base forms the lower part of the Dormant Volcano Vase, which is topped with a yellow-tinted open-topped conical form. A dormant volcano is one that is not currently erupting, but is likely to erupt again.
"The vase is floating on the magma ball giving it visual instability that expresses the constant instability and uncertainty of the timing of a new eruption," Allgayer explained.
The Lava Eruption Bowl is formed of three pieces – a red base, a turquoise mid-section shaped like an upturned cereal bowl, and a large open red top.
"A lava eruption is a term used for the kind of eruption when red glowing lava is expelled by a volcano," said the designers. "The red base illustrates the underground magma, the light turquoise middle base the volcano and the top part the lava exploding up into the air."
Subglacial eruptions, such as the 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajökull that brought global air traffic to a standstill, are those of ice-covered volcanoes, characterised by ash instead of lava eruptions.
The Subglacial Eruption Vase features a bulbous grey form on top of a white base.
"A dark ash cloud breaks out from the white, ice-covered volcano," said Allgayer. "The glacier appears very tiny in contrast to the big ash cloud, though in reality the glacier is huge. This play with size differences expresses the extensive impact that a subglacial eruption can have."
The Crater Lake bowl is an orange bowl with a green-tinted lip. A crater lake is a body of water found in a volcanic crater or calder – a cauldron-like feature formed by the collapse of land following a volcanic eruption, triggered by the emptying of the magma chamber beneath the volcano.
"The production process is metaphoric to the geological collapse of the land as the surface is sucked from below to create the bowl," said the designers.
The collection was launched at Design March in Iceland last month, alongside Lava Fields for Varma, a 100 per cent Icelandic organic wool blanket, inspired by the latest Icelandic volcano to erupt, Holuhraun.
"The pattern on the Lava blanket is illustrating the spread of these dense lava fields, and the gradients that are created," Allgayer told Dezeen. The blanket is available in red and orange, or dark blue and grey.