Byredo and Iittala launch Ljus, a glass and scent collection born from Nordic light

Byredo and Iittala have launched Ljus, a collaborative collection that explores light through glassmaking and scent. First announced earlier this year, the range joins Byredo fragrances with Iittala's century-long heritage in Finnish glass, producing objects meant for the rituals of the home rather than display.

The collection holds five pieces: a thick candle stand, a candle ornament, a light refractor, an incense holder and a fragrance diffuser. The refractor is the piece Iittala creative director Janni Vepsäläinen returns to most, describing it as the starting point of the series and its clearest expression.

Each object is handcrafted in Iittala's glass workshop, so no two pieces are identical. The subtle variations that come off the blowing iron are part of the point, carrying the personality of the maker into the finished form. Glass is never pressed here; it is gathered, shaped and cooled one object at a time.

Vepsäläinen frames the whole project as a conversation between crafted glass and living light. 'Lighting a candle is a beautiful, meditative moment,' she says. 'The scent enters your nose and fills the room, and glass works as a beautiful companion for that living light. They sort of complement each other.'

The northern light gave the collaboration its starting point. Living where winter arrives as near-total darkness and summer offers endless daylight, both brands understood that light is not a neutral backdrop but a material with seasons, angles and temperatures worth designing around.

'Being from Northern Europe, we also share an understanding of the northern light, which shifts from complete darkness in the winter to eternal sunshine in the summer,' Vepsäläinen explains. That shared geography is rare for a fragrance house rooted in Stockholm and a glassmaker from Finland.

The ornament is designed to be placed directly on top of a burning candle, where its shape catches and scatters the flame. The refractor goes further, encasing the candle to create what Vepsäläinen calls a mesmerising interplay. The incense holder and diffuser carry the same ornate silhouettes into other rituals.

The diffuser vessel repeats the refractor's silhouette, translating the same poured and blown form across the line. That consistency binds the five objects into one system, so a candle stand and an incense holder read as relatives rather than unrelated products sharing only a label.

Vepsäläinen locates the collection's value in the marks of its making. Speaking of the refractor, she notes that the process of glassblowing is almost tangible in it, with the molten material's formation still legible in the details. Craft, for this collaboration, is not a marketing word but a visible residue.

Byredo was founded in Stockholm in 2006 by Ben Gorham, who took the name from the phrase 'by redolence'. The house builds fragrances around memories and places instead of gendered categories, and it sells nothing as men's or women's. Its scents arrive as intimate recollections rather than compositions aimed at a market segment.

We have written our own guide to the house, where we rate Bal d'Afrique the first Byredo to buy. Moroccan cedarwood and vetiver ground a sunlit opening of African marigold, buchu and bergamot, and it stays wearable all year. Mojave Ghost and Gypsy Water are the two worth testing on skin before committing.

Ljus extends that logic into objects. The collection takes the mood a Byredo candle already creates and gives it glass companions built to hold, refract and celebrate the flame, which is a different ambition from simply adding another scented product to the range.

Craft as the shared value

For Vepsäläinen, the collaboration rests on what the two houses hold in common. 'The strongest shared value is a belief that objects can carry emotion and meaning, as well as function,' she concludes, adding that Nordic design should serve a purpose and live inside people's everyday routines.

That keeps Ljus away from ornament for its own sake. Every curve in the glass has a job, whether it cradles a candle, scatters a flame or holds a diffuser's reeds. The ornate forms are decorative only in the sense that a well-made tool is pleasing to look at while it works.

The collaboration also matters for Iittala, a house best known for tableware and vases built on the same glassmaking tradition. Working with a fragrance brand pushes glass from the dining table toward the bedroom and the hallway, into the softer, dimmer hours where a flame, not a bulb, does the illuminating.

The result is a collection with a rarity that machine production cannot imitate. Because every piece is blown by hand and carries those small differences, a buyer receives something no one else owns in exactly the same form. Iittala has not stated edition sizes or pricing, and the objects are sold through the brands' channels.

What comes next is left open by both houses. No second chapter, fragrance pairing or limited run has been announced, and the collection stands as it launched this autumn: five objects, one material, and a small ritual built around a flame and the glass that holds it.