Storied Finnish glassworks Iittala has unveiled Unda, its debut collaboration with Sabine Marcelis – a range of lamps and vases that required the designer to develop a whole new production technique in collaboration with the company's glassblowers.

The three-piece Unda collection, named after the Latin word for wave, uses mouth-blown glass to recreate the undulating reflections of light on water.

"I'm fascinated by the way sunlight or moonlight hits rippling water," Marcelis said. "It's a mesmerising, ever-changing dance. I wanted to capture that in a more permanent way."

Marcelis is known for manipulating reflective and translucent surfaces to mesmerising effects, as seen in her Candy Cubes and the best-selling IKEA doughnut light.

Her collaboration with Iittala – the historic 145-year-old glass company behind the Aalto Vase – is a natural extension of these investigations.

"Her fascination with light, opacity and transparency feels uniquely relevant to Iittala and glass," Iittala creative director Janni Vepsäläinen told Dezeen. "These qualities are fundamental to the medium, yet can completely transform our perception of a simple object."

The idea for Unda was born from a conversation between her and Marcelis about the particular quality of Finnish light, the low angle of the sun, how it glints off the water and its colour changes over time.

To capture this quality, the designer worked with glassblowers at the company's workshop in Finland – the largest glass factory in the Nordics and the only one left in the country.

Together, they developed a new technique for pressing the ripple texture into the inside of the glassware using welded metal grids, so it appears to be part of the material rather than something applied to it from the outside.

"Pressing the pattern onto the inside of the object is something Iittala has never done before," Vepsäläinen said. "It proved challenging, but through several trials and workshops, we finally succeeded."

The result is a cylindrical table lamp with a subtle wave pattern that becomes more pronounced when illuminated, as well as a vase that's also available in a jumbo-size version that's nearly half a metre tall and was produced in a limited edition of 500.

All are available in one of three colourways – the soft pink of Dawn, light umber Dusk and smoky grey Shadow.

Vepsäläinen sees Unda as a continuation of Iittala's existing work in using glass to immortalise the slippery qualities of water.

"Exploring fluidity and water is part of Iittala’s DNA," she said. "The first designer to capture the essence of water ripples was Aino Aalto. Her rippled drinking glass series, introduced in 1932, is the oldest design still in production at Iittala."

Also on Dezeen, we recently published an exclusive look at Marcelis' Rotterdam loft apartment.

The photography is by Sofia Kulianu.