The Society’s task was to maintain the vocational school Veistokoulu, which had started its operations in 1871 and was responsible for the higher professional training of Finland’s craftspeople. In the following century, the school developed into the University of Art and Design, which is now a part of Aalto University.

The second task of the Society was to take care of the artefacts collection obtained from the 1873 Vienna World’s Fair, from which the Museum of Applied Arts, today’s Design Museum, was formed. Management-wise, the museum was under the Society until 1989. The Society also held exhibitions and lecture events and maintained a library.

The founders of the Society and the vocational school were Swedish-speaking and liberal influencers of society, the most significant of them being Carl Gustaf Estlander, Professor of aesthetics and general literature at the University of Helsinki. He has also been called the father of the Finnish applied arts.

In 1875, the original name of the Finnish Society of Crafts and Design was in Swedish Föreningen för konstfliten i Finland and later, according to the rules of 1892, Konstflitföreningen i Finland. Little by little, the society became more Finnish, and in 1907 the Finnish name Suomen Taideteollisuusyhdistys was also taken into use.

Photo: C.G. Estlander, Ateneum Art Museum

Though the building plan is disguised as a dreamlike vision, it is a rather detailed description of a house shared between the fine and applied arts. In addition to Estlander, people such as Viktor von Haartman, a Privy Councillor and the chair of the board of the Finnish Society of Crafts and Design, and Leo Mechelin, a senator and a member of the board, who both managed relations to the government and the city of Helsinki, spoke in favour of the Ateneum.

In 1882, there was an international architectural competition to start the planning of the building, but the winning proposal was deemed to be too expensive and the design task was then given to the architect Theodor Höijer, who also became the director of the construction work.

At that time, the construction of the Ateneum was an expensive, large and demanding project that used a lot of the newest building technology. The opening ceremony of the Ateneum building was held on 18 November 1887. The Finnish Society of Crafts and Design owned four sevenths of the space and the Fine Arts Association of Finland owned the rest. The schools and museums maintained by these organisations moved into the Ateneum building.

Image from the book Suomen Taideteollisuusyhdistys ja sen keskuskoulu 1870–1875–1925, Frenckellin kirjapaino Oy 1925. Photo: J.A. Lindh

The pavilion was a total work of art in the style of art nouveau, and it also had traces of Finnish nationality and national romanticism. Axel Gallén (Akseli Gallen-Kallela from 1907 onwards) painted the main hall’s Kalevala-themed ceiling frescoes and designed the so-called Iris room, whose furnishing included the furniture from the famous furniture factory Iris, red clay ceramics of A. W. Finch and the textiles weaved by The Friends of Finnish Handicraft.

The Iris room is said to be the starting point of the Finnish national style and applied arts. Finland wanted to use the 1900 Paris pavilion to show the world that it was a culturally independent state separate from Russia.