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Jyvaskyla, Finland
Interntional Magazine
© 2004 Bonita Productions Inc.
Finland Flag
By Bonnie Neely
Photos by Bill Neely
FINNISH ARTS AND CRAFTS IN JYVASKYLA
CRAFT MUSEUM OF FINLAND
In Jyvaskyla you'll find the excellent Craft Museum of Finland where you can purchase some of the highest quality of handmade Finnish gifts in the TAITO Gift Shop. The featured craft show changes periodically. While we were there the feature was felt art. Near Jyvaskyla, in the small village of Petajavesi, is a school and manufacturing company for felt art and products. We learned the many different ways felt can be used as art and as functional items. There were beautifully-designed felt clothing, furniture, fun objects, and displays which made poignant statements like the rack of felt guns.
Felt Guns At Craft Museum of Finland
PAPIINA'S NEW FASHION EXHIBITION
The new exhibition beginning in November features many stylish fashions of silk and felt by PAPIINA. This company also makes high quality interior decoration items, jewelry, gifts, clothes and clothing accessories. They are based on traditional products with a modern concept and must be unique, practical and easy-care.
Piia Kolho and Leena Sipila, owners of the company, are careful of the smallest details and usually agree on ideas about design, color, and style. Click here to learn more about their fashionable products. (You can request English at the bottom of the webpage.)
Pia Shows Felt Items Leena Demonstrates Hats
CRAFT MUSEUM CIRCLE OF LIFE
Jyvaskyla's Craft Museum of Finland has a beautiful Circle of Life section which features cases of objects of everyday life which are lovingly made by hand, both ancient and modern, for use on special occasions during a Fin's life cycle, from birth to death.
The history of arts and crafts of Finland is uniquely displayed and explained through the unusual display marked "Touch Please," instead of the normal museum warning of "Do Not Touch." These tactile museum pieces are of special interest for the sight-impaired and depict the history of Finland through arts and handcrafts, from stone and bronze ages to the modern computer age, ending with a board on which the visitor can suggest what the future of arts and crafts might be.
This lakelands area of Finland is where felt is made in several local factories in small villages. Wool fibers are compacted in special ways to bond them. Felt today is far more durable than in the past and can be washed. As told with a smile, historians deduced that the first felt was made in Noah's Ark. The people needed a soft place on which to sit and lie down, so they took the animal hair and placed it on the damp floor of the Ark where it was mashed for forty days. When Noah's family finally emerged from the ark, they discovered they had felt!.
Dir. Pentti Rissanen, Principal
The Central FInland Institute of Arts & Crafts
The Central Finland Institute of Arts & Crafts, in its 97th year in the village of Petajavesi, is a three-year school which about 200 students attend. They have about 40 faculty members. The students learn design, techniques, and a craft to specialize in . They create a marketable portfolio and perfect their craftsmanship, as well as learning how to turn their specialty into a business after achieving certification.
FELT MAKING IS SPECIALTY HERE
But citizens don't have to be professional artists to enjoy learning crafts well. Taito-Keskus, the Jyvaskyla Handicrafts School, is a place for continuing education for ages four through adults who come weekly to learn various arts and crafts. Almost any handwork you can think of is taught here, from wood, metal, pottery, painting, printing, weaving on large looms, paper and basket making, to silk screening and more.
Tuula Juntunen Shows Craft Exhibit
at Taito-Keskus, Continuing Education
This wonderful school provides equipment and excellent instruction in small classes for about $100 per semester. Items made by these hobbiests were of amazingly high quality, demonstrating the enjoyment derived in the hand work. Each year in June they have an arts and craft exhibition at the museum. Appreciation of the arts is emphasized in Finnish schools. With classes like these in arts and crafts, children can carry on old, traditional crafts, perfect them, and innovate new techniques and items which meet the needs of modern society.
PAPER MAKING IS FUN AT TAITO-KESKUS
We had the fun of becoming students learning how to make paper from pulp. Hilkka Vanni, a paper artist who designs and sells one-of-a-kind lamps, teaches paper making at Taito-Keskus and delighted us by asking if we'd like a quick lesson. We had so much fun creating our own paper design, and decorating it with colored pulp. It was fun to experience what the students themselves do in this excellent school.
Handmade Wooden Church At Petajavesi
Ancient Wood Church Shows Loving Craftsmanship
In the same secluded village where art thrives today, we were able to visit a living piece of art history, the handmade wooden church from 1763-65. Angels carved on the pulpit have quaint, painted forms and faces, and the circular blue ceiling in the entrance signifies heaven, with the equilateral red cross in the center to represent God.
The hand-hewn wooden walls, floors, and pews, held together with wood pegs and handmade iron nails, are an amazing heritage demonstrating the reverence of the ancestors. The church is too cold to be used in winter, but many summer weddings still take place here. And some people come by boat to attend numerous concerts which utilize the nearly perfect acoustics. Real Travel Adventures Web Magazine
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© 2004 Bonita Productions Inc
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