150 years of design promotion

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

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, 50-vuotisjuhlapainos?, Frenckellin kirjapaino Oy 1925, s.13. 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.

The Finnish Society of Crafts and Design and the Applied Art Association in Finland ORNAMO shared the responsibility for Finland’s section in the 1933 Triennale. Exhibition architect Harry Röneholm’s design was ingenious and suitable for the harsh budget; the exhibition tables were packing cases covered with Enso cardboard that had been painted black, and the display cabinets were ordinary shop cabinets and counters. 50 Finnish companies or creators participated in the exhibition.
Finland received a total of 34 prizes and Harry Röneholm, Elsa Elenius and Maija Kansanen received the Grand Prix prizes. The Italian press praised Finnish design, and both King Victor Emmanuel III and Prime Minister Benito Mussolini visited the Finnish section and purchased Finnish artefacts there. Finland’s success made industrial arts more appreciated among other industries, but the success and the publicity brought by it were not utilised like they would be in the 1950s.

In 1950, Tapio Wirkkala presented the exhibition idea to H. O. Gummerus, Wärtsilä-Arabia’s PR Manager, and asked the company for financial support. Gummerus was immediately enthusiastic about the idea and recognised the opportunity to take Finnish design to the world. He negotiated the funding for the Finnish exhibition jointly from the state and private businesses such as Wärtsilä-Arabia, Iittala, Boman and Artek.
Gummerus was sent to the Triennale as a representative of the Finnish state. With his language skills, he took the role of helper and liaison to the Triennale organisation for not only Finland but also other participating countries. H. O. Gummerus was a journalist by education and had lived in Rome in his childhood and youth, as his father Herman Gummerus had served as Finland’s Envoy to Rome. Later, he had studied in Paris and New York. In October 1952, he became the first Director of the Finnish Society of Crafts and Design, and from there began his work as a promoter of Finnish design, lasting almost a quarter of a century.
The IX Triennale di Milano in 1951 was an international breakthrough and a great victory for the Finnish applied arts. The Finns received a total of 25 awards, six of which were the highest prizes, the Grand Prix. Tapio Wirkkala was the exhibition commissioner and exhibition architect and won three Grand Prix, one of which was for exhibition architecture.
The Finnish section was simplified and elegant. According to Wirkkala, austerity and minimalism were stylistic means for disguising the shortage and deprivation that prevailed in post-war Finland. There was an abundance of glass and ceramics on display in the exhibition, but only a few textiles, for example.
Foreign magazine reviews praised the objects’ stripped-down design language and restrained colour scheme, and the objects were found to reflect Finnish nature. The Italian magazine Domus dedicated 14 pages with pictures for the Finnish section. The success gave rise to talk of “the miracle of Milan”. Photo: Pietinen

The exhibition was designed by interior designer Ilmari Tapiovaara. In Tapiovaara’s words, the exhibition was a way to show what the term ‘industrial design’ meant and how it differed from exclusive applied arts. Finnish applied art exhibitions had been criticised for showcasing luxurious unique artefacts and forgetting the ordinary everyday objects. This exhibition was also a way to improve cooperation with industry and assure the consumer of the competitiveness of Finnish products.
The exhibition had been divided into different sections which each had its own symbol representing the subjects or shapes found in nature. These included a honeycomb cell, a giant eye and an egg. The main attraction of the exhibition was the first Finnish People’s Car, manufactured by Wihurin Uusi Autokoriteollisuus Oy, which ultimately did not go into production. According to the press, the exhibition showcased objects ‘from a light button to a crane.’ New product groups included plastic items, leather products, household appliances and radio devices.
Over 11,000 people visited the exhibition and guided tours of the exhibition led by designers were held. The exhibition was also reported on in several radio programmes and on the TES Television.

The project was related to the fact that the Finnish Society of Craft and Design’s operations had picked up, and it is an interesting part of the active and contemporary communications policy of the society in the 1960s. Normal communications operations naturally included press releases and press conferences related to domestic and foreign exhibitions and other events organised by the society.
From the beginning of the 1950s to the end of the 1970s, the Finnish Society of Crafts and Design collected a lot of newspaper articles about Finnish design. Through the press clipping service of the Finnish Cultural Foundation, 1,537 of these articles were collected in 1963.

The Nordic countries were represented at the opening ceremony by H. O. Gummerus, Managing Director of the Finnish Society of Crafts and Design, who was the prime mover of the entire exhibition project. The last exhibition was seen in Canberra at the turn of the year 1968–1969.
The exhibition architect was Antti Nurmesniemi, who also designed the exhibition catalogue and poster. The catalogue text was written by the Swedish journalist Ulf Hård af Segerstad, who also wrote a great deal about Finnish design. The general secretary of the exhibition was Ulla Tarras-Wahlberg. She toured with the exhibition to all seven exhibition sites. Later in her career, she acted as the director of both the Swedish and Norwegian applied arts associations.
The exhibition attracted a lot of attention and was visited by a total of 200,000 visitors. Sales exhibitions were held in department stores. Australian TV and radio broadcast more than five hours of programming on the exhibition, and the exhibition was accompanied by presentations on the Scandinavian lifestyle, society and economy. The exhibition included 23 companies and 43 designers from Finland.
Photo: West Australian Newspapers Ltd.

On the day of the founding of the society, 29 October, at 10 am, an anniversary meeting was held at the society’s premises at Unioninkatu 30, to which the members of the society’s administrative bodies had been invited. The meeting was chaired by Jussi Saukkonen, chairperson of the administrative board of the Finnish Society of Crafts and Design.
The meeting announced the establishment of the 100th anniversary foundation of the Finnish Society of Crafts and Design. The task of the new foundation was to support and promote the Finnish applied arts field in its entirety. Managing Director H. O. Gummerus was invited as an honorary member of the society. After the anniversary meeting, the society received congratulations.
The official 100th anniversary celebration was held in the Assembly Hall of the University of Helsinki on the evening of 29 October 1975, and the President of the Republic, Urho Kekkonen, honoured the celebration with his presence. The 100th anniversary celebrations also included an extensive history exhibition “100 vuotta suomalaista taideteollisuutta” (100 years of Finnish applied arts), which was on display at the Ateneum Art Museum from 31 October to 7 December. The exhibition architecture was designed by Antti Nurmesniemi.
The 100-year history of the society, “Finnish Design 1875–1975”, was written by Erik Kruskopf, and the graphic design of the book was executed by Timo Sarpaneva and Erik Bruun. Sarpaneva also designed a commemorative stamp. The anniversary year of the society was extensively covered in both the domestic and foreign press, and at the same time the current state and future of Finnish design were discussed.

The exhibition was held in the recently renovated Kunsthalle Helsinki and it was a part of the Helsinki Festival programme. Kirmo Mikkola acted as the exhibition architect and Timo Keinänen was responsible for the collecting of the applied arts artefacts and the research of the section.
The exhibition illuminated Modernism, how the Functionalism phenomenon had arrived in Finland in the 1920s and 1930s, and how Functionalism had given people faith in the future. The different manifestations of Functionalism were presented in the sectors of fine arts, applied arts, architecture, literature, film, theatre and music.
In the following years, the Funkis exhibition toured the Nordic countries and East Germany. The opening ceremony of the exhibition, held in 1985 in the Ausstellungszentrum am Fernsehturm (the TV tower) of East Berlin, was grand, and the exhibition attracted as many as 24,000 visitors.

The office spaces and operations of the society’s office and the former Design Forum merged. The new premises were located at Fabianinkatu 10. For the first time in its history, the society now had its own exhibition space in Helsinki. A bigger exhibition space, the Hall, was meant for showcasing industrial design and more extensive temporary exhibitions. The Gallery was suitable for handicraft exhibitions, among others. The new spaces also housed office and storage spaces and also a small shop of Finnish design. Interior designer Simo Heikkilä was responsible for designing the facilities.
The opening ceremony of the new spaces was held on 10 December 1991. In 1881, 110 years earlier, in the house located in the same spot on Fabianinkatu, the Finnish Society of Crafts and Design and the Friends of Finnish Handicraft had organised the first Finnish applied arts exhibition.

In the afternoon, three discussions were also held. Their topics included the ecologic nature of products, the design representative activity’s meaning to SMEs, and the education of the furniture sector, among others. The theme day attracted 400 interested visitors to Design Forum Finland and they were served Christmas porridge, as was customary.
In 1993, design was a topic of conversation even at the ministry level. Design Forum Finland gave its statement on the KUPOLI Kulttuuripolitiikan linjat report (the national cultural policy) of the Ministry of Education and on the Council of State’s culturopolitical account. The report of the strategy committee of industrial design, set by the Ministry of Trade and Industry, was published and Director Tapio Periäinen had been heard as an expert consultant in the preparation stage of the report.

Eleven well-known designers were invited to the exhibition: Bertel Gardberg, Fujiwo Ishimoto, Yrjö Kukkapuro, Irma Kukkasjärvi, Antti Nurmesniemi, Vuokko Nurmesniemi, Ritva Puotila, Timo Sarpaneva, Pirkko Stenros, Marja Suna and Oiva Toikka. Classic Makers exhibited designers who were involved in creating the concept of Finnish Design and let them choose one of their works that stood above all others. The exhibition included both classic products and new products from the 1990s.
The aim of the exhibition was to show that the classics did not create themselves, but that a classic product was based on solid professional skills, product development and good cooperation between the designer and producer. To paraphrase Managing Director Anne Stenros: the creation of a classic also required insight, luck and the right timing. The exhibition was designed by architect Pentti Kareoja, and the large portraits of the creators featured in the exhibition were photographed by photographer Jussi Aalto. The international version of the exhibition toured China and the United States in 1996 and Milan in 1997. It also included works by Alvar Aalto, Kaj Franck and Tapio Wirkkala. Photo: Jussi Aalto

The products reflected the Nordic design tradition: the stripped-down expression of form, practicality, sparse materials and high quality, but they also showed signs of international influences. Some of the exhibition objects were final products, some were experiments, and others utilised new technology and materials.
The exhibition was organised by Design Forum Finland and it was made in cooperation with its Nordic sister organisations. The exhibition was opened in the Scandinavia House, New York City, in November 2000. It got a lot of attention from the American press and e.g. The New York Times published two long articles related to it.
The exhibition toured the United States and Mexico from 2000 to 2001. It was seen in Design Forum Finland in Helsinki and in the joint Nordic embassy building in Berlin in 2001. In 2002, it continued its tour in Canada, after which it was presented in Glasgow and Reykjavik.