Iittala Vases Gifts and Decorating Aalto Premium Finlandia Vase, Small, White - With these vases Alvar Aalto, one of the century's greatest architects, won a competition held in 1936 to find new Finnish glass for the Paris World Exhibition. Since then the Aalto vase has become perhaps the world's most famous glass object and, in the opinion of many people, an icon of the 20th century. So, if you wanted to obtain an object as a memento of the past decade, what would be the most suitable one?