Saturday, 16 November
11 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Admission with the museum ticket
Design Museum’s new Collectors and Collections exhibition gives museum visitors a peek into treasure troves of Finnish design collectors and presents high-quality Finnish design. Along with design treasures, Celebrating Design Day offers meetings with designers and helps visitors with identifying Arabia, Iittala, and Nuutajärvi products from their homes. Design Workshop will give visitors of all ages an opportunity to design their own decorations with inspiration from the classic decoration patterns of the Arabia factory’s products.
Program:
Noon–5 p.m. | Free identification of objects – come and hear the story of your design treasure. |
Noon –2 p.m. | Heikki Mattila tells about his collection of Arabia´s milk pitchers. |
1 p.m. | Guided tour of the Collectors and Collections exhibition (in Finnish) |
1 p.m.–3 p.m. | Sneaker collector Jukka Lehtinen will be at the exhibition space |
1 p.m.–4 p.m. | Creating decorative patterns in the Design Workshop |
1.30 p.m. | Discussion about the world of design forgeries with Marjatta Sarpaneva (in Finnish) |
2 p.m.–4 p.m. | Teak collector Jonas Forth tells about his collection. |
3 p.m. | Guided tour of the Collectors and Collections exhibition (in Finnish) |
3 p.m. | Guided tour of the new Collectors and Collections exhibition (in English) |
4 p.m. | Guided tour of the Collectors and Collections exhibition (in Finnish) |
The collectors tell about their collections
Noon – 4 p.m.
At noon, Heikki Mattila will talk about his and his wife Virve Mattila’s milk jug collection, consisting of over 1,200 milk jugs and creamers made by the Arabia factory. These products include hundreds of jug and pourer models, with different types of decorative patterns for each model. The Mattilas’ collection is a compilation of products made by Arabia in Finland over a period of around 150 years. The purpose of the couple’s collecting activity is to preserve a cultural-historical collection for posterity so that also in the future people can see what was made in Finland and how this was done. After his brief talk, Heikki Mattila will be available to meet museum visitors in the exhibition to discuss his pastime of collecting, the Arabia factory and his collection.
From 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Jukka Lehtinen, who has collected the Karhu running shoe collection seen in the exhibition, will be available to meet museum visitors in the exhibition. He began his collection of Karhu shoes while still in school and continued, from a ring-side seat, while working in marketing for the Karhu company from 2009 to 2015. In terms of cultural history, the most important running shoes were the three-striped Karhus of the 1950s. Karhu sold the rights to the three-stripe logo to Adidas in 1952.
At 2 p.m. Jonas Forth will talk about the background of his collection. He has focused on a specific material instead of selected objects and has a collection of some 500 teak items. Forth has also concentrated on gathering information about Finnish carpenters and cabinetmakers who made teak objects and will be happy to discuss this subject with others who are interested in it. Jonas Forth will be available to the public in the exhibition from 2:15 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Discussion about design forgeries (in Finnish)
At 1:30 – 2 p.m.
Marjatta Sarpaneva, the widow of designer Timo Sarpaneva, will lead the audience into the world of design forgeries. She will talk about a Finnish design forgery scandal from the turn of the millennium in which Timo Sarpaneva’s Kayak glass sculpture had a leading role. On show in Collectors and Collections is the authentic Kayak alongside its forgery.
Free identification of objects – come and hear the story of your design treasure
Noon–5 p.m.
On Design Day, the museum will give visitors an opportunity to find out more about design objects in their homes. If you would like to hear more about the designer, year of manufacture, decorative patterns or material of an object that you own, please take it along to Design Day at Design Museum. On Saturday, 16 November, our experts will focus on identifying Finnish glass and ceramics. If you have an item of Arabia tableware or Iittala or Nuutajärvi glass that is unknown to you, bring it to the museum to be identified. Each visitor can bring only one piece to be identified. No museum ticket needed. The objects will be identified in the museum’s auditorium by curators Johanna Kiuru and Susanna Thiel of Design Museum’s Collections Department. The experts will not give price estimates for objects.
Identification of objects on a first-come-first-served basis, no bookings.
Design Workshop: Decorative patterns
1 p.m.–4 p.m.
The Design Evening workshop session focuses on the world of tableware decoration of the Arabia factory. Visitors can drop in at this non-stop workshop to design their own decoration for tableware. The visitors’ own decorative patterns are designed with the Arabia factory’s patterns as their starting points and with the aid of material from old books of patterns. The patterns are designed on paper with guidance and instruction from Design Museum’s workshop guides. Participation in the workshop does not require any previous skills. All visitors are welcome to participate.