101 Designers

Elna Kiljander was born in 1889 and is perhaps best known as one of Finland’s earliest female architects of model homes and kitchens but also for her furniture designs, many displayed at her concept store Koti-Hemmet home in Helsinki. Kiljander was a feminist, becoming a member of Architecta, the Finnish women’s architecture association, from its establishment in 1942.

Born on 4 November 1889 in Sortavala, Finland Elna Kiljander was the daughter of a Finnish father and a Swedish mother. After her father detah, the family moved to Helsinki, where Kiljander graduated as an architect from the Helsinki University of Technology in 1915. She went on to teach graphic design in Povenets in Russian Karelia but returned to Finland the following year. She opened a private office, concentrating on social living matters and everyday furnishings in the home.

Kiljander became interested in functionalism when visiting the Stockholm Exhibition in 1930 and subsequently adopted it in her housing designs as well as in the model kitchens she developed for the Martha Association. Kiljander planned kitchens for homes and schools and in 1932 she planned the renowned modern large kitchen in the Parliament Building.

Her friendship with Finland’s first female politican Miina Sillanpää nurtured her work on model homes and kitchens for workers, as well as furnishings and furniture. Sillanpää commissioned Kiljander’s most important work: the Ensi-Koti home – one of her most important works. The Ensi-Koti (First Home), was a home built in 1940 for unmarried mothers and their children and Kiljander had herself become a single mother after a brief marriage with the sculptor Gunnar Finne from 1918 to 1926.

Together with textile designer Marianne Strengell, she founded interior design studio Koti-Hemmet in 1934, an interior design business where she designed furniture in a style closely resembling that adopted later by Alvar Aalto in the 1930s – a pre-Artek store where Aalto’s furniture was sold. Influenced by developments in Swedish design, her work exerted a significant impact on Finnish interior design in the 1930s. Koti-Hemmet declared bankruptcy in 1949, which ultimately lead to Kiljander’s retirement from architectural work.

• Elna Kiljander
• 1889 – 1970
• The kitchen at the domestic science teacher school in Järvenpää, 1928
• Furniture for the Parliament Building in Helsinki, 1932
• The boy’s room at the Paris World Fair, 1937
• The Ensikoti union’s house in Helsinki, 1942

Lyyli Inkeri (Li) Englund (née Uotila 1908 – 1993) was a Finnish costume and textile designer.

She attended the Ateneum school from 1930 to 1933, studying to become an art teacher. It was here that she met her future husband, Kaj Englund, who at the time was a teacher at the school. They married in 1935 and their first child was born the following year.

Li would go on to have a long career and also worked as an assistant at Kaj Englund’s architectural firm designing wallpaper and interiors for his projects, her handiwork can be seen in the architectural drawings.

She also designed fabrics for Artek, alongside the company’s other pattern designer Aino Aalto. Englund’s printed fabrics were often inspired by nature in floral patterns or classically straightforward graphics. She also designed for theaters and at the time the costumes and hats she designed for herself were the most eloquent “Haute couture” in Helsinki.

Kaj and his brother Dag drew and built Villa Bjerges on Lauttasaari, Helsinki in 1937 and it became the home for many of the Englund families. Li Englund especially liked the garden and it was often featured in interior decoration magazines in the 1940s-1960s.

• Lyli Inkeri (Li) Englund
• 1908 – 1993
• Fabric and interior designer

Maija-Liisa Komulainen, known to her peers as Maikki, was born on 29 January 1922 in Kajaani, Finland. She graduated from the Institute of Crafts and Design in Helsinki in 1949 and opened her own practice in the city the following year, where she would remain for the next seventeen years.

She came of age professionally at a fortunate moment. Finland’s postwar furniture industry was expanding rapidly — public buildings needed furnishing, exports were growing, and graduates with the right training found work. Komulainen was among a cohort of designers from her era who each carved out an individual field: an oral history recorded by furniture designer Olli Mannermaa in 1990 names her alongside fellow students Olavi Hänninen, Jorma Valve, Marja Leskinen, and Sirkka Pohjonen as part of a generation that helped build Finnish design’s international standing from within.

Her furniture work was varied and technically confident. She designed seating in wood, wicker, and metal — lounge chairs, sofas, and cane pieces — some produced for Uusi Koti–Nya Hemmet. A cane hanging chair is documented in photographs courtesy of Reino Komulainen, suggesting a family connection to the craft. In 1960 she filed a US patent for a lounging chair — Patent No. 3,072,435 — assigned to Stephen B. Tanner of Bethesda, Maryland. The design uses paired semi-circular runners as a base, with seat and back sections integrally connected, producing a low rocking form that reads as a direct forerunner of the sculptural seating that would define the decade.

The commission that gave her the most lasting visibility in Helsinki came in the late 1950s, when she was engaged — together with Sylvi Kekkonen, wife of President Urho Kekkonen — to refurnish Tamminiemi, the presidential residence. The existing interior had been dominated by faux rococo furniture; the two replaced it with a modernised scheme that reflected the confidence Finnish design culture was developing in that period.

By the early 1960s, Komulainen had moved into lighting, and it is here that her reputation has proved most durable. A French design publication from the period groups her with C. Colombo of Milan as among the first designers to seriously tackle the problem of integrating lighting into modern interiors — how to avoid the anachronism of traditional lampshades on contemporary furniture. Her solutiom, developed for the Amsterdam manufacturer Raak, was a series of metal light objects that used concealed or indirect sources to produce atmospheric illumination rather than direct light. The Fuga wall light — a cluster of aluminium tubes configured to resemble organ pipes, finished in copper-coloured anodised aluminium with white enamel interiors — became her signature piece and one of Raak’s most commercially successful designs. She was described in the trade as a central figure in the Raak design team, placing her in the company of Tapio Wirkkala and Italian designers such as Sergio Asti among the manufacturer’s international contributors. The Chantarelle, a floor and table lamp inspired by the mushroom form in anodised aluminium, followed from the same period and the same relationship with Raak.

In 1967 she left Helsinki and relocated to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, where she founded Estudio de Interiores together with Li Helo, a French-Finnish designer she had worked alongside in Finland. The studio operated from the Francisco Gourie area of Las Palmas. Her Helsinki address at the time of departure was Linnankoskenkatu 3, and she retained her professional memberships in the Finnish Association of Interior Architects SIO and the designer association ORNAMO. What the studio produced in Gran Canaria, who its clients were, and how long it continued to operate are not documented in any source currently available.

• Maija-Liisa ‘Maikki’ Komulainen
• Born in 1922
• Silver medals for her exhibits at the internationales in Paris in 1954 and in Brussels in 1955.
• Interior decorator for numerous commercial and residential buildings in Helsinki
• Founded Estudio de Interiores in 1967 on Gran Canaria

Hilkka Mekri (Säynäjärvi) (nee Otsakari) (1917–88) studied at the School of Industrial Arts in Helsinki, graduating in 1945, and started working at Arabia that same year. Most of the students at the time were women, as were the ceramists at Arabia, and in time they would become renowned for their work.

After the Finnish Winter War she married Rafael Mekri, who died in the Continuation War. She got a position at the arts department at Arabia, whose artists were given more privileges and freedom to create. She focused on creating plates, bowls and vases, experimenting with various glazes and decorations. Mekri was friends with ceramist Kyllikki Salmenhaara and there are resemblances in their work.

In the end of the 1940s Hilkka Mekri remarried with Klas Säynäjärvi, a geologist who travelled extensively in his work, and they had two children at the end of the 1940s and beginning of the 1950s. Although Arabia had a kindergarten, which took care of the children while the parents were at work, Hilkka Säynäjärvi decided to leave her career and become a housewife.

Säynäjärvi painted and worked on fabrics such as silk paintings and embroideries during her time at home. Over time she got back into ceramics, renting a basement space in the 1960s where she could throw and burn her creations. in 1966, the family moved to the small town of Parainen in Finland. Säynäjärvi got her own space at the tile factory Turun Kaakeli, for whom she also created company gifts to order.

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• Hilkka Mekri (1917–88)
• De Bijenkorf department store in Holland (1949) – exhibition of ten artists working at Arabia at the time.
• Best known for her work at Arabia from 1945 to 1952.

Sources:

https://antiikkidesign.fi/blogit/keramiikkataiteilija-hilkka-saynajarvi

When it comes to good design, we quite often take it for granted. One of the best examples of this is the dish drying cabinet – a shelving rack placed above the sink, with an open bottom and shelves made of steel wire or dowels to allow washed dishes set within to drip into the sink and air dry.

The origin of the idea is disputed but the concept was popularized by Maiju Gebhard (1896–1986), the head of the household department at the Finnish Work Efficiency Institute in the 1940s. Gebhard became a household teacher in Sweden in 1919, where she also discovered dish racks placed on the sink.

She worked as a counsel for the small farmers union for many years and during that time she calculated that a Finnish housewife spends over 30.000 hours of her life washing dishes, and the dish drying cabinet would save up to 50 percent of the time used.

The first drying racks, 135 and 100 cm wide, were produced out of wood by the Finnish Work Efficiency Institute in Vilppula, Finland in 1945 and the industrial production began in 1948 at the Enso-Gutzeit factory, with an updated plastic-coated steel wire model introduced in 1954. The drying cabinet was standardized in 1982 and it has since become an accessory in virtually every Finnish home. Among others IKEA nowadays features dish dryings racks in its range of kitchen series.

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Maiju Gebhard dedicated her life to improving the work of Finnish homemakers. During the war, when the men were at the front and the women had to do the hard labour, she developed new tools and processes which helped make work easier. Examples of this is a shoulder support for carrying heavy goods and a indoor container for bio waste. The time saving measures not only made work lighter but also allowed families more time together.

• Maiju Gebhard
• Born 1896, passed 1986
• Gebhard wrote extensively about time saving measures in the home and published many books.
• Other who created their own versions of the dish drying rack: Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (1926), Angiolina Scheuermann (1929) and Louise R. Krause (1932).
• Renowned for her dish drying rack placed above the kitchen sink. Her first notes date the idea to the late 1920s.

Eva Hidström studied at Ateneum under among others the renowned designer Bertel Gardberg (who urged her to start working with enamel) in Helsinki in the early 1950’s and from 1956 until 1967 she had a studio in Salo, with work and study stints in Germany and Switzerland as well. Her teacher Max Fröhlich helped her develop the technique while she studied in Switzerland.

In Finland she worked with her apprentice Vuokko Kavander. She created lots of jewellery in the shape of bracelets, necklaces and earrings and focused on enamel decorations, among them scraffito which involved laying different layers of enamel glass on top of each other. She also made enamelled boxes and even exhibited at the Milan Triennale in 1960.

From 1968 until 1971 she worked for Hopeakeskus (The Silver Centre) where she crafted candle holders, spoons and bowls like the one below, their inside covered with bright blue or orange enamel.

She has also worked for the gold smith Tillander (1954-1955) and she has taught at the Finnish Goldsmith School (1971-1982).

Eva Hidström particularly liked her framed enamel work as it allowed her to express herself freely without the commercial restraints. She made most of them in the 1980s.

A large part of her work was exported and there seems to be very few items on the market but her archives are held by the Design Museum in Helsinki.

• Eva Hidström
• Born 1930
• Pioneered the use of enamel design (cloisonné) and helped bring to and further the art form in Finland and around Europe.

Images from Turun Sanomat, Bukowskis, Auktionsverket, Leimat.fi, Salon Taiteilijaseura, Design Museum and the magazines Yhteisvoimin and Me Naiset.

Heidi Blomstedt, born Sibelius in 1911 at the Sibelius residence Ainola, her father being composer Jean Sibelius. Blomstedt would excel in her ceramic work, her designs breaking with the style at the time.

Blomstedt was home schooled by her mother but later studied ceramics at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki, graduating in 1932. In the summer of 1929, at the wedding of her sister Margareta, Heidi met the architect Aulis Blomstedt. They married in 1932 and had two children in 1937 and 1946.

The ceramist Elsa Elenius taught at UIAH from 1930 until 1962 and both she and the ceramist A. W. Finch made a great impact on Blomstedt. She made the observation that homeware articles and decorative objects were hard to tell apart because the homeware was often overly decorative. Thus she reasoned that rational design was the way to elevate the everyday life. This was also reflected in her husbands work and art and they wrote articles together on the subject.

After graduating from the university she predominately worked as a freelance ceramist with a focus on objects of a minimalist nature. She briefly worked in stints during her studies at the Arabia factory (1873- ) in Helsinki, Finland and at Upsala-Ekeby (1886-1980) in Uppsala, Sweden in the 1950s.

Inspired by her ceramic work at the factory in Sweden, Blomstedt crafted a series of ceramic bowls and vases in geometric shapes at the ceramics factory Kupittaan Savi (1921-1969) in Turku, Finland in the early 1960s. Later in the decade she worked at the Kumela glassworks (1933-1985) on a similar design language – thick glass bowls and vases named Lumilasi (Snow Glass).

Blomstedt also worked on a series of clay masks in the late 1960s.

“Simplicity has justified its legitimacy in contemporary interior design”

Blomstedt’s design expression was stripped of decoration and relied on colours and shapes, which for example at Kupittaan Savi clearly put them apart from the rest of the production at the factory. She designed them with clear shapes in mind with the colours yellow, red, brown and blue, and they work especially well as a series.

Her work have received new found interest in the 2000s with objects rarely surfacing at auction.

Heidi Blomstedt 

• 1911-1982
• Best known for her ceramic work at Kupittaan Savi in the early 1960s
• Her works were presented at industrial design exhibits in the 1930s as well as the Paris World Fair in 1937
• Her collected works were exhibited at Gallery Pinx (1957- ) in 1963

Marjatta Metsovaara-Van Havere (né Metsovaara (1927 – 2014) is especially known for her rugs and colourful printed fabrics , some of which are still in production.

Metsovaara was born into a multicultural family, and her father Aleksander had started a textile factory in Urjala in the 1930s. She attended The School of Arts, Design and Architecture in 1949, studied with other designers such as Maija Isola and Nanny Still, and then started Vennas Oy with Helin Vennas and Senja Laine-Ylijoki in Helsinki.

She expanded the family business in 1954, changing the name into Metsovaara Ltd and branching into woven textiles, wall tapestries and rugs as the company’s artistic director from 1957 until 1980. The first orders came from Artek, Asko, and Funktio. She also designed for other companies such as Finlayson and Valvilla (former Villayhtymä).

Metsovaara arranged many exhibitions both domestic and abroad, the first one at Artek in 1957, and received recognition and awards at many of them.
Metsovaara married twice, had four children, set up and ran a weaving company in Belgium from 1965 with her second husband Albert Van Haveren whom she married in 1966. Metsovaara sold both that company as well as the company that bore her name in 1980 and 1990. She moved to Nice in 1984 following the death of her husband.

Metsovaara designed the Flower and Shell patterns in the early 1960s and other assisted designs for the former textile company Tampella. She was especially interested in the colouring of the textiles and spent much time focusing on getting them right. Other mentionable patterns are Reed and Primavera, which has become a classic.

• Marjatta Metsovaara
• Born 1927, passed 2014
• Arranged Expo exhibitions in 1963, 1966 and 1969 – the largest private exhibits in Finnish history at the time
• Awarded at the Milan Triennale in 1957 and 1960
• Lauréat de la Sélection Nationale de Design Industriel, Brussels in 1963
• Ornamo Silver Ball in 1964
• Signe d’Or Medal in Brussels, in 1968 and 1985
• Received the Pro Finlandia medal in 1970
• Woman of the Year 1977 in Finland

Photos from metsovaara.shop