Kaj Franck Design prize 2002
Ceramic designer Anneli Sainio
The 11th Kaj Franck Design Prize, donated by the Finnish Fair Foundation was awarded in 2002 to ceramic designer Anneli Sainio (born 1953).
After graduating from the University of Art and Design in 1979, Anneli Sainio worked for almost 20 years as an instructor in ceramics in various schools and institutes of learning. She established her first ceramics studio in Helsinki in the early 1980s. Moving to the Fiskars crafts community in 1994, she began to work on self-employed basis. Anneli Sainio’s works have been on show in numerous exhibitions all over the world.
For Anneli Sainio, ceramics is literally a way of life and a livelihood. She has made thousands of vessels and pieces, from start to finish. Her work is steered by an intense desire and love for clay, and by the material’s boundless opportunities for experiment and new objects.
Anneli Sainio’s works have much in common with Kaj Franck’s ideology of design: the desire to create household objects of beauty serving a variety of uses with nothing unnecessary or superfluous. Anneli Sainio’s designs can be said to have three dimensions – form, texture and time. She proceeds from basic geometric forms, squares and circles. By repeating, combining and varying these forms countless collections of tableware and settings of different size can be created. The distinct minimalist forms of the pieces leave space for the design of the surface. Combinations of different glazes, clay materials and firing techniques produce unique textures of beauty. The objects are durable, lasting and timeless in their design.
