A Glassmaker Combines Traditional Techniques and Modern Tech

In her workshop on Suomenlinna, an island fortress begun in 1748 to protect Helsinki, now the Finnish capital, from Russian invasions, Sini Majuri carries out her craft, the centuries-old art of glassmaking.

But behind the arched doors of her studio, which was once an armored chamber, the 40-year-old artist uses glass as a medium to explore often-complex subjects such as human nature, violence and femininity.

She pairs modern technology with traditional glassblowing techniques, including graal — a method in which a design or illustration is encased in multiple layers of colored and transparent glass.

“I can 100 percent say that her practices push the boundaries of glassmaking,” said Lincoln Kayiwa, a furniture and home accessories designer in Helsinki. “Every time we meet she has something new that she’s working on. And by new I don’t mean just a new project, but on a new approach, where she integrates glass with new techniques or production processes.”

Sitting outside her studio one recent afternoon, Ms. Majuri exuded the combination of modernity and antiquity reflected in her work. She wore one of her pieces — an antler-shaped, clear glass headdress — and a red linen gown she said she had sewn the previous day. (She had used a 3-D scanner to measure for the crown-like headdresses, one of which was used in a futuristic ballet featuring a human and a robot.)

“I think what interests me most is how to combine storytelling and glass,” she said. “Glass has this optical property. It mirrors the world around us but it can also bend and change an image. In this way I see it as a very poetic medium. And it is somehow a very interesting paradox, that it is both fragile and forever.”

Ms. Majuri had originally set her sights on a fashion career. During an exhibit of wearable technology in 2007 at China Fashion Week in Beijing, she noticed a large, glass wall-like sculpture designed by the Finnish glassmaker Oiva Toikka.

“I just admired the work and was hypnotized by it,” said Ms. Majuri, who went on to get a degree in glass and ceramics from Aalto University in Helsinki in 2013. “I thought it seemed like such a cool material and I knew then that I wanted to learn how to use it.”

Glass — its combination of fragility and durability; its power to distort, magnify and reflect — is now her signature medium. Her work has appeared in 95 exhibitions internationally and has won more than 20 awards, including 13 Italian A’ Design awards. (She has since served as a juror in the competition three times.)

“One of the main qualities that Sini has is this freshness, a way to see with virgin eyes the material and a way to discover new sides to it,” Adriano Berengo, a maker of contemporary glass, said by phone from the famed Italian glassmaking island of Murano. Ms. Majuri had demonstrated the graal technique in his studio last year during the Venice Glass Week festival.

“It’s a different way than I approach it,” he said, “but…