If you’re a longtime reader of this site, you know that we are, above all, sunshine-seeking people who happen to be inextricably linked to New York and its fickle seasons. Normally we leap at the chance to hightail it off the East Coast anytime between November and April, in search of beaches, pools, palm trees, and vitamin D. But somehow, while Monica and the rest of the design world headed to Miami at the beginning of December, I found myself saying yes to a week in Finland, home of 30-degree temperatures and 3PM sunsets. When I arrived, no fewer than three people delighted in telling me that the previous month in Finland had seen only 15 hours of sunshine.
There was a lot of that in Finland — hearing the same story from multiple people, like the one about Elton John buying a rare piece of contemporary Finnish glass — and in the end that’s one of the things I ended up loving most: the cozy familiarity that comes from being a country with a population that’s almost half that of New York City. Everyone tells you the same stories, everyone eats split-pea soup and pancakes on Thursdays, and everyone in the design and craft world seems to know each other.
I spent five days in Helsinki and the Finnish countryside (along with our wonderful host, Katarina Siltavuori, a Finnish curator working on behalf of Ornamo, and two other curators), meeting a huge number of those designers, seeing more than a few design factories and exhibitions, and achieving a personal holy grail: visiting the Alvar Aalto home and studio, which didn’t disappoint. I also visited the studio of an up-and-coming fashion designer who so epically impressed us she’ll be getting her own story in the coming weeks. Til then, here’s a look at the sights we saw and the work we loved.
Our first stop upon arriving in Helsinki was the Arabia ceramics factory. The factory was founded in in 1873, but we learned that many of Finland’s most famous tabletop brands — including Arabia, Iittala, Royal Copenhagen, and Rorstrand — are now owned by Fiskars, the orange-handled scissors people, and they share a campus next to the Aalto University of the arts, on the outskirts of town.
Though Arabia makes the kind of spare classic dinner service that pops up in many Finnish homes — and its vintage versions in Finnish flea markets — they also do big business with decals, both for adults and kids. This beautiful machine heat-seals decals onto blank ceramic mugs.
All of Arabia’s ceramics are made in-house, and the majority of them go through the long, tunnel-like brick kilns. This kiln measured something like 50 meters long.
The finishing stations.
Glazes and finished product. One of the best stories we heard on the tour was how, when the factory was renovated, they found a sealed room containing never-before-seen molds from the ’30s and ’40s, signed by designers like Kaj Franck.
On the 9th floor of the factory is the Arabia Art Department and gallery. The factory offers an artist-in-residence program — with no expiration date — where artists get discounted studio space and access to Arabia’s facilities in exchange for freelance work within the company. The current department includes famed ceramicist Kim Simonsson, Kristina Riska (whose amazing, nearly 5-feet-high sculptures are shown here), and Fujiwo Ishimoto. At the time of our visit, Riska had sent much of her work to Design/Miami, but she’ll also be having an exhibition at the New York gallery Hostler Burrows this spring. We can’t wait to see some more of these beauties in person!
Jasmin Anoschkin, whose wood and ceramic sculptures are shown here, is the most recent resident. The Art Department residents also frequently join together with other Finnish ceramicists to exhibit under the name Helsinki Fat Clay.
Somehow, despite major jet-lag, I was able to give a talk that night along with my other curators at the Design Museum Helsinki, where we also got a tour of the Ceramics & Space exhibition. My favorite installation was these hundreds of tiny cups by Nathalie Lahdenmäki and Naoto Niidome inside a sauna-like wood enclosure. It seemed a perfect encapsulation of its Finnish and Japanese makers’ heritage.
The next day we drove an hour into the countryside to visit Fiskars village. This is where the company was originally founded in 1649 — at the time they made nails, wire, knives, hoes, and reinforced wheels, as well as cast-iron products like frying pans — but these days the town is more artistic hub than manufacturing center. The ironworks closed in the 1980s, and since then Fiskars has become home to more than 100 artists and artisans who form a cooperative that exists to promote the activities of its creative members.
We shopped the main street, which is home to everything from a ubiquitous Iittala outlet to local boutiques like Onoma, which sells the work of Fiskars residents. Along the way, we noticed how pretty and weirdly design-y the national post box is.
We also noticed this amazing steel sculpture in the yard of one of the artisans on the main street; we later learned it was the work of Howard Smith, an American-born artist who moved to Fiskars in 1998 with his wife, the ceramicist Erna Altonen (more on this sweet couple later!)
After lunch we began visiting the artists in their studios. First up was Karin Widnäs, a well-known Finnish ceramicist. Widnas built this house and studio over 10 years from local timber, and instances of her work are incorporated throughout; this incredible wall of red clay tiles are her own, for example. (We also were green with envy at her outdoor sauna, which is basically de rigueur in Finland!)
Next up: Finnish woodworkers Nikari, who have a studio and basement workshop in Fiskars. Nikari is probably best known for a project they launched in 2012, which gathered together contributions from designers like Harri Koskinen, Jasper Morrison, Marti Guixe, and Alfredo Haberli.
Our favorite stop in Fiskars was the apple barn–turned–art–filled home of ceramicist Erna Altonen and Howard Smith. Altonen has a studio in the basement of the house; here she builds massive ceramic pieces from rolled-up ribbons of clay that are then patinated or oxidized to create these beautiful hues.
Smith has a studio in the rear of the house that I could have spent all day in. Smith is in his late ’80s, and eyesight is failing now, but he still obsessively creates these masks, among other things.
Smith was born in New Jersey and went to school in Philly but moved to Finland in 1984, where he worked for a time for the Arabia ceramics factory.
His work takes inspiration from a range of materials: paper, wood, textiles, enamel, metal, ceramics, and glass, as well as the often found objects that go into these masks. (One of my favorite masks was made from an old colander!)
We’re pretty sure Smith is long overdue for an exhibition stateside. Is anybody listening?
The next day we drove even further into the Finnish countryside to visit the Nuutajärvi glass village. The glass factory is now owned by Iittala and was closed early last year, but there are still hot shops and many glassblowers still live in the village. I took this photo in the village’s glass museum, which was founded by Kaj Franck, Nuutajärvi’s art director in the 1960s and 70s.
These mesh and glass pieces in the museum are by Markku Salo, a contemporary glass artist who still lives and works in the village.
A Nuutajärvi barn in the infamous 2:30PM sundown light.
Another instance of everything is better designed in Finland: This truck belongs to the fire department.
More work by Markku Salo.
Our last day was the only day spent completely in Helsinki, and with the exception of a trip to Lokal, a wonderful little design store where I spent far too much money on a piece of ceramic work, our day was spent getting to know all things Artek. We started the day at the Artek flagship, where this cute installation of Stool 60s stood in the window.
Next up was a visit to the Alvar Aalto studio, which is relatively unchanged since the architect’s 1950s heyday.
The studio is a short walk from Aalto’s home, which is also available for tours. I didn’t catch a good photo of the incredible wall of climbing plants in Aalto’s studio, but I did love this window wall of cacti in the Aalto’s living room.
Major interior design inspo. If that chair wasn’t $6,000, it would be mine.
The house was a nice mix of Aalto-designed Artek pieces that remain in production (like the beehive pendant shown here), out of production pieces (like the coffee table), and works built for the family’s personal use.
The last stop on our Artek tour was 2nd Cycle. In part, it’s a traditional vintage furniture shop, but there are also Artek products on the floor that have been reclaimed from flea markets, schools, estate sales and garages and given a new lease on life either through reconstruction or simple paint jobs.
This bright green Enzo Mari Sedia 1 chair was one of my favorite 2nd Cycle projects.
A better look at the 2nd Cycle showroom, including two Yrjo Kukkapuro chairs that are my well-documented obsession. My only complaint about my trip to Finland: It was too short! We’ll be back there soon, and so should you!
Sighted today on Nowness, a post celebrating the opening of Helsinki Design Week — and the year of design events taking place in the Nordic capital in 2012 — with a photo essay featuring contemporary furniture and lighting by eight established and up-and-coming Finnish designers, shot inside Alvar Aalto's house. Located in the Munkkiniemi neighborhood of Helsinki, the meticulously preserved home provides the perfect backdrop for work created by a generation of designers who, living in such a tiny country, must all inevitably feel the influence of Aalto's outsized legacy — visually speaking, the project also reminded us of our favorite installation at the 2010 Milan Furniture Fair, when contemporary furniture was inserted into the hallowed rooms of Piero Portaluppi's Villa Necchi Campiglio. The Nowness story was beautifully shot by the young French photographer Estelle Hanania, and we've excerpted half of those images here.
We may have spent most of our New York Design Week(end) tending to the most successful Noho Design District ever — wrap-up post coming soon! — but this year we were determined to see as much of everyone else's presentations as possible, including spending more time walking the International Contemporary Furniture Fair at the Javits, checking in with old friends while discovering new talents. And since Roll & Hill opted not to reprise the bar they plopped in the middle of the fair last year, plying us with beers and chips as we charged our phones and completely lost track of time, we were able to do a relatively thorough sweep before racing back out into the sunshine again. We started out just snapping products we loved, but then couldn't resist adding a Sight Unseen twist, so we asked some of the more adventurous designers and brand ambassadors to strike a pose with one of their new pieces — which turned out to be a welcome break from the tedium of spending one's days doing business inside a windowless convention center. See our highlights here, then stay tuned for our roundup of this year's offsite shows.
As design-store owner Dave Alhadeff sees it, there’s a distinction between the kinds of craftspeople he is and isn’t interested in: The latter make objects primarily to show off their manual skills, while the former are motivated by a larger concept, a wish to make tangible some abstract artistic meaning. Carving toothpicks into forest animals? Skills. Carving porcelain into vases so mind-bogglingly intricate they appear to be made by machine? Concept. A subtle difference, but one that helps it seem slightly less absurd to picture Alhadeff — who runs The Future Perfect, one of New York’s most well-respected purveyors of contemporary design — roaming the aisles of a Westchester craft fair, chatting up potters and glassblowers. Concept, he explains, is what builds a bridge between pure craft and design.
