Olga Osol

OLGA OSOL (1905-1994)

Olga Osol had an important place in the story of Arabia Finland. She began her career at Arabia Finland as an assistant to artist Greta-Lisa Jäderholm-Snellman in 1926.

Talented and enthusiastic about work, Osol was afforded the opportunity for further education in evening classes at what is now the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture. Much of her latter tenure at Arabia was as director of the Applied Arts Department where her tasks included overseeing decoration the of models, decoration techniques, and often hand painting or color glazings.

From war time Arabia's warehouses were left with a lot of undecorated items and a special decoration department was established for processing in 1943 employing many new young apprentices, whom Olga Osol trained. 

Until 1959, Osol managed a department of which name was changed to Department of Industrial Arts in the 1950's. She worked for Arabia until 1971, with the last ten years in the Department of Product Design. 

The tableware sets designed by her were marked with R and came on the market in 1941, many of which had modern and sleek shapes despite the traditional structure. The R models were produced with different kinds of ornaments still in the 1950's. Her most popular design was Myrna – named after Myrna Loy, American movie star of the 1930s. This traditional floral style design with its heavily gilded rims was produced from 1937 up until 2005.