Finnish Women Designers Celebrated

Finnish women have had full political rights since 1906. The exhibition, FEMININE FORM, which is also dedicated to this centennial anniversary, is an homage to the versatile and ambitious achievements of women in the field of design. Until now, the heroic history of design in Finland has largely been written from a male perspective. Owing to reasons of history and attitudes of society, the creative work of women in design has often remained without its due appreciation and visibility.

Great male figures are remembered as the heroes of the nationalist art of Finland at the turn of the twentieth century. The period ideal of the total work of art, however, required the efforts of skilled women in sculpture, painting, furniture design and architecture alike. Textile design was the first field to have a large number of self-supporting professionals.

A great many of the artists were women. Eva Anttila and Maija Kansanen attracted international attention with their textiles at the 1929 World’s Fair in Barcelona and won the gold medal for their country. In Milan in the 1930s, Aino Marsio-Aalto helped put Finland on the world map of design along with her husband Alvar Aalto. Both Artek and Marimekko have been led by women of artistic talent and vision. The success of these companies would not have been possible without the personal contribution of Maija Isola and Vuokko Nurmesniemi.

The success of Arabia’s women designers – Toini Muona, Friedl Kjellberg and Aune Siimes – in international exhibitions has partly influenced the present image of the 1950s as the golden age of Finnish design.

It has often been seen that womanhood is an asset and that the character traits typical of women match the needs of contemporary society. In the field of industrial design, the design of prams and strollers or the planning of waste disposal in homes, among other tasks, have readily become women’s projects, while men have been involved in the design of means of transport, cars, ships and technical equipment.

In our ostensibly equal society, glass is mainly created by women, both as freelance designers and studio artists, while the markets and society still appear to be promoting men as the heroes of glass design.

The exhibition FEMININE FORM explores the contribution of Finnish women in design throughout the period we can speak of as a history of Finnish design. All of the selected objects could be shown, with due cause, in any design exhibition alongside works by men. The exhibition is divided in four parts: encounters, entrepreneurship, tapestries and from home to industrial design. In each part, feminine design is seen from another perspective and presented using different materials.