Birger Kaipiainen (1915-1988)
ceramic artist and designer
Birger Kaipiainen was one of Finland’s best-known and most highly respected ceramic designers. Called the ”king of ornament” and the ”prince of ceramics”, his works were marked by ornamentality, fantasy and exoticism. He was born in Pori, but the family later moved to Helsinki. Birger dropped out of high school for failing his mathematics course and because he was more interested in art and culture. He was admitted to the school of the Ateneum in Helsinki as a trainee student at the early age of 11, and he went to study ornamental painting and ceramic design at the Central School of Arts and Crafts from 1933 to 1937. After graduation, he was hired as a designer by the Arabia factory in Helsinki, and his career at the factory’s renowned art department continued for over fifty years.
Kaipiainen’s first duties at Arabia involved the decoration of dishes, jugs, vases and other faïence objects by painting and scratching. In the 1940s, various wall plates, plaques and serving-table tops became his personal trademark. They were decorated with human figures, trees, flowers and birds. Their colours ranged from various hues of blue and green to violet and purple, and the pieces had a lyrical and even a slightly mystical tone. Kaipiainen drew upon the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and his whole oeuvre was influenced by childhood memories of summers spent on Lake Ladoga and the atmosphere of the Valaam monastery there.
During the winter of 1949-1950, Birger Kaipiainen worked for the Società Ceramica Richard Ginori in Italy. During this period he began to make long-necked stylized female figures painted on pieces of faïence or other media. These works were richly decorated, with bead ornament as a new feature. A Byzantine influence is also present in the faces of the figures. Kaipiainen called the works ”prisms”.
Kaipiainen’s work at Arabia was interrupted by employment as a designer for the Rörstrand factory in Sweden, where he remained from 1954 until 1958. It has been estimated that the years with Rörstrand were his ”most multifaceted, fragmented and unfathomable period”. He worked intensively, producing pieces that were perhaps bolder than his work in Finland. He still made his ”prisms”, but also other sculptural works with themes such as horses, flowers and butterflies, with their surfaces often decorated with flowers, violets and faces.
Upon returning to Arabia, Kaipiainen was given a skilled assistant, Terho Reijonen, who had worked as an ornamental painter at the factory. Their decades of collaboration evolved into Kaipiainen’s rich and diverse oeuvre. Reijonen wheel-turned the pieces, because Kaipiainen was unable to use the potter’s wheel because of a disability caused by polio. Birger Kaipiainen made the first of his well-known ”bead-bird” figures soon after returning from Sweden. They required thousands of beads, which Reijonen made by hand. The beads were later made in series at the Turun Posliinitehdas porcelain works, but they still had to be painted by hand. The decoration of the wall plaques and large dishes was carried out by Kaipiainen first drawing the motifs and assigning the colours and Reijonen then engraving the depressions and grooves, such as the stems of the plants and the stalks of the leaves. The surface was coated with ceramic dye, filling the grooves. The colour was then removed from the surface around the grooves by scratching and the other motifs and background were painted. The raised ornamental designs were glued to the piece after firing and glazing.
Kaipiainen’s large bead-birds (curlews) were eye-catching pieces at the Finnish department at the Milan Triennial of 1960, where they were awarded the Grand Prix. Works of the 1960s included large dishes, often with designs in relief, such as fruit or flowers. In the late 1960s, Kaipiainen made mystical works of glass sculpture representing angels playing harps. Music was very important for Kaipiainen, who recalled that it guided his thoughts and hands to design new themes and motifs. Kaipiainen probably best-known work of the period was Orvokkimeri (Sea of Violets), a large mural relief measuring 4.5 x 9 metres, which was on show at the Finnish department at Expo 67 in Montreal. The individual violets were made by hand and over two million beads were set into the surface of the relief. The swans were made of smaller swan figures and the mirrors represented water. It is now on the wall of the assembly hall of the Tampere City Council.
The ornamental themes changed in the 1970s and 1980s. Kaipiainen now made highly painterly dishes with both three-dimensional designs and their own interiors. In the late 1970s, dragonfly and beetle motifs appeared in the dishes. Armi Ratia of Marimekko was Kaipiainen’s good friend and the gardens, candelabras and chandeliers of Ratia’s Bökars Manor east of Helsinki are present in his works.
Birger Kaipiainen concentrated almost uniquely on one-off works. One exception, however, was the Paratiisi (Paradise) tableware collection. With its forceful designs and colours, Paratiisi was taken into production in 1969. The plates and dishes were oval like Kaipiainen’s one-off pieces. It was sold as Eva in unpatterned white and as Aatami in yellow. In the early 1970s, it appeared as Apila, with a clover motif. Paratiisi was discontinued when Arabia was merged with the Rörstrand company in 1974. Many protests and the widely held opinion that Paratiisi was part of the Finnish cultural heritage led to its reintroduction in 1987. In 2000, the production of the black and white version of Paratiisi was resumed and the Apila tableware was revived in the spring of 2006. In addition to Paratiisi, Kaipiainen designed for Arabia an ornamental theme named Tapetti (Wallpaper) and a butterfly motif for a pourer from the 1950s.
Birger Kaipiainen was a ballet fan and a great friend of the theatre, with his own reserved seat at the National Opera of Finland. In 1951 he designed the sets for the ballet ”Sleeping Beauty”. He designed the costumes for at least two plays at the Swedish Theatre in Helsinki, the ”Marquesse de Sade” (1970) and ”Gustav III” (1982).
Another exception to Kaipiainen’s work in ceramics was the designing of wallpaper for the Pihlgren & Ritola company. Kiurujen yö (The Night of the Skylarks) is possibly Finland’s best-known wallpaper design, particularly in its blue version. It contains the themes of birds, violets and bells familiar from Kaipiainen’s ceramics. Another wallpaper design by him was Ken kiuruista kaunein (Which is the most beautiful skylark). Both wallpaper designs are from 1957.
Birger Kaipiainen held several solo exhibitions during his career. Between 1954 and 1984 he had eight exhibitions at the Wärtsilä-Arabia showrooms in Helsinki. While working at Rörstrand he had an exhibition in New York in 1955, and his works were on show in Paris in 1965. A retrospective was held at Retretti in Savonlinna in 1989 and later at the Museum of Applied Arts (present-day Design Museum) in Helsinki in 1990. Birger Kaipiainen was awarded prizes on two occasions at the Milan Triennials, receiving the Diplome d´Honneur in 1951 and the Grand Prix in 1960. He also participated in numerous international exhibitions of the Arabia Art Department and the Finnish Society of Crafts and Design, and was one of the star figures of Finnish design. Kaipiainen was awarded the Pro Finlandia medal in 1963, the Helsinki City Art Prize in 1970, the Illum Design Prize of Denmark in 1972 and the Prince Eugen Medal of Sweden in 1982. He was given the honorary title of professor in 1977.
Although Birger Kaipiainen received a state artist pension in 1981, he still came every day to his studio on the ninth floor of the Arabia factory. He died at work on the evening of 18 July 1988.
Auli Suortti-Vuorio
Bibliography:
Arabia. By Marjut Kumela, Kristiina Paatero & Kaarina Rissanen. Helsinki 1987.
Berg, Maria, Kaipiainen. Keuruu 1986.
Birger Kaipiainen. Exhibition catalogue, Jarno & Kaarina Peltonen eds. Exhibition at Retretti in 1989 and the Museum of Applied Arts in 1990. Taideteollisuusmuseon julkaisu no 32.
Birger Kaipiainen – Tarinoita astiaston takaa. Press release by Hannele Nyman for an exhibition of Birger Kaipiainen’s one-off pieces and the black Paratiisi collection at the gallery of the Arabia Museum.
Nyman, Hannele, Welcome to Paradise. The works of Birger Kaipiainen. Form Function Finland 3-4/2000.
Taidekeramiikka Suomessa, Åsa Hellman ed. Keuruu 2004.
Photos:
Madonna and Child
Oy Arabia Ab 1951. Photo Design Museum
Bead Bird
Oy Arabia Ab. In production from 1962 to 1967. Photo Design Museum
Violet Tree
Orvokkipuu (Violet Tree) relief. Oy Arabia Ab 1968. Photo Design Museum
Paradise tableware
Paratiisi (Paradise) tableware. Oy Arabia Ab 1969. Photo Design Museum
