A few months back, I found myself in an awkward situation. You know the kind – you buy a birthday gift for a friend from Etsy, and, when the thing arrives, you inconveniently fall headlong in love with it yourself? Then you have to decide whether or not to painfully part from your new beloved (largely because your friend has already seen a picture of the gift) or to claim that the item simply never arrived, and keep it forever?! This kind of situation. In my case, the thing in question was a mid-century coffee pot, designed by Ulla Procope as part of the Ruska line for the Finnish-based Arabia house and produced continuously between 1962 – 1999.

The pot itself was originally part of a 17 piece coffee set, accompanied by a milk jug, lidded sugar pot and six cups and saucers. There are thirty pieces in the wider Ruska tableware line, including the world’s most adorable squat teapot! The coffee pot is 18.5cm high, 20 cm wide and 11cm in diameter. It has a comfortable air about it, seeming durable and solid with industrial overtones and some whimsical touches. The sides rise straight from the flat base, with a slight lip flaring out where the walls curve into the lid. The spout is stylishly angular, offset by the elegant loop of the handle. A nice detail is the way the spout and handle finish at the same point on opposite sides of the body of the jug. The matte brown and slightly greenish glaze is rustic and slightly oily.

The top of the jug is my favourite part. There’s something nautical about this plug of a lid, reminiscent of a floating buoy or a part of a ship. The neat roundness of it and the way it fits so snugly to the rest of the jug gives the whole piece a whimsy which keeps the piece from becoming ponderous. On the underside of the lid are two small indents, designed to fit to the flat side of the pot’s lip so that it is held in place. The lid doesn’t fit absolutely snugly though, which means there is a nice chime as it moves when the pot is picked up. The whole piece gives off a content, solid and strangely peaceful air.

Ulla Procopé (1921-1968) studied ceramics at Helsinki’s Central School of Arts and Crafts and was employed by the Arabia factory upon graduating in 1948. In 1956, she moved to the product design department of the factory, where she spent the rest of her career, specialising in ceramic tableware. The Ruska line featured among her best designs. An article from the Helsinki Design Museum notes that Ruska was created from grey stoneware and fired at a high temperature, making it very durable. As a result, the items are both oven and dishwasher proof, responding to a need in the late fifties for tableware to be more durable. The items in this practical line became regarded as typical of Finnish ceramic design.

Ruska itself is a Finnish word, derived from the Sami language word “ruškat” and close to the Finnish word ‘ruskea,’ meaning brown. The word refers to this phenomenon of autumn colours, leaves changing from green to orange, red, brown and yellow. This short season of changing colours is apparently spectacular, especially in Lapland, where gorgeous displays of autumn foliage attracts visitors from all over the country.

I love that the name of this line of tableware connects the pieces to nature and, in particular to this short season. The link with Ruska seems to mean that an aspect of the natural world is brought inside to the table with the use of these items. The colours of the glaze echo the changing hues of autumn, but, more than that, the pot and the rest of the line do seem to capture a sort of solid and slow earthiness of autumn in their shapes – there’s a cosiness and reflectiveness to them. Maybe if you own them and use them, they are a constant reminder of this beautiful time of year and the transiency of the seasons in general.

I wonder whether there’s also a sense of ritual which links the season of Ruska and this tableware too. The annual progression of leaves falling in the autumn and the habit of visiting them seems like a ritual within the year, just as the act of making and pouring coffee has a sense of smaller, daily ritual about it. Both are part of the round of life, but are a little special too, elevating daily existence for a while and providing a sense of connection, to nature and the seasons and possibly the passing of time. I like that the use of this jug could potentially allow for a moment’s pause to reflect on the natural world and this seems to elevate the piece to a rather special object - a coffee pot which brings the autumn inside.

For now, I’ve given this jug away, but I’m hoping that by the time my own birthday comes around in November and ruska is over, I might be able to treat myself to a piece of this stoneware and to fall in love with it all over again!