Iittala Aino Aalto Plate Small Clear Set of 2. It seems no coincidence that Aalto means wave in Finnish. Aino Aalto (1894-1949) also caused waves with her glassware collection that beat her husband's entry in an Iittala-Karhula design competition in Finland and went on to win the gold prize at the Milan Triennale in 1936. In the 1930's there were a lot of cheerfully useless objects floating around. Dinner services were vast and ornate, and kept in cupboards most of the year. Aino Aalto's radically simple design seemed as if it had arrived from the future. Not only did she use glass, but she also cleverly maximized the advantages of pressed-glass mass production techniques to create decoration out of the form and the material. An eloquent thought that explained how a more human and harmonious form of mass production could make design masterpieces available for everyone.