PAAVO TYNELL. CEILING LAMP, modell 9018 Taito. The model was designed for the Finland House restaurant in Manhattan New York in 1948.

Polished brass, ten perforated lamp shades and animal motifs. Height approx. 75 cm, diameter 90 cm.

Paavo Tynell originally designed the large animal themed ceiling lamps for the Finland House restaurant, which opened in Manhattan, New York, in April 1948. At the end of the previous year, four of these lamps were manufactured at the Taito factory on Vilhonvuorenkatu in Helsinki to decorate the bar on the upper deck of the restaurant. Tynell was responsible for the lighting design of the entire restaurant, while architects Aarne Ervi and Helvi Mether-Borgström and interior architect Lasse Ollinkari were responsible for the rest of the interior design. Most of the materials were shipped to New York from Finland. Tynell traveled to the site to supervise the installation of the lamps.

The restaurant and the store that operated in connection with it, the Finnish Art Shop, were intended to be a representative showcase of Finnish culture and applied arts for the American public, who had been effectively isolated by the war from Finland, a wartime ally of Germany. A previous similar project in the wake of the 1939 New York World's Fair fell through with the outbreak of war. The Finland House project, which was revived in 1946, was supported by the Finnish Foreign Trade Association and several Finnish companies as shareholders. A separate company was established for the restaurant, the main owner of which was Einar Ahlström, chairman of the boards of Taito and Idman. Idman was also the main wholesaler of Taito's lamps. Tynell's connections with both Ervi and Ahlström naturally led to Tynell and Taito being given the task of lighting.

In their own original way, the lamps of Finland House represent a shift in Tynell's lighting design after World War II. Tynell's design language had already begun to change towards softer shapes and warmer materials in the late 1930s. In a sense, it can be argued that the union of the critique of pure functionalism and the availability of brass after the war freed Tynell to combine rational design with the decorativeness inherited from his work in the 1920s. The result was completely original lamp designs, which the public saw for the first time in Finland in the Kestikartano restaurant (1946) and the Helsinki City Hall restaurant (1947) and the Vaakuna restaurant (1947). The latter is particularly closely related to the lamps in the bar of the Finland House restaurant. Tynell's spouse Helena Tynell drew the animal motifs for the lamps and the animal-themed decorations for the Vaakuna restaurant, which was opened only a few months earlier. Tynells also used similar cat and tiger figures cut from metal in metal tables delivered in small quantities to both the Vaakuna restaurant and the Finland House premises. The lamps in the bar featured stylized hares, foxes, moose, bears, capercaillies, fir trees and stars – Finnish nature exoticism in a modernist outfit.

The Tynell lamps displayed in the Finland House were a hit, with American magazines noting their special quality. The New York Times Home Magazine wrote in May 1948: "American architects and lighting engineers have been so intent on concealing the sources of light by various built-in devices that visible fixtures designed to be decorative as well as functional seem to have been almost forgotten. The most original fixture designs seen in some time come from Finland. They are designed by Paavo Tynell."

In addition to Tynell’s lamps, the Finnish Art Shop sold small pieces of furniture, textiles, decorative objects and the Kaleva Koru jewelry collection, but it was already noticed during the first year of operation that only Tynell’s lamps generated enough business. The bar lamp was given the product number 9018 in Taito, but it was not included in the basic collection. At least for advertising purposes, the model was displayed in the Finland House custom collection. The delivery time for this flagship lamp was three months and its price exceeded the price of the famous Snowflake chandeliers. Idman included the lamp in the Finnish custom collection in the latter half of the 1950s. The price was not mentioned in Idman's catalogues, and no information about the sales numbers has survived.

Finland House went through various corporate reorganizations before its story ended around 1958. The centrally located building was sold, the restaurant was closed, and the new owners demolished the building to make way for a skyscraper. Tynell's lamps continued their conquest of America under the auspices of the family business Litecraft already in 1954. Finland House was a short-lived bridgehead of Finland's western orientation in the United States and Paavo Tynell's lamps became symbols of a small country reaching westward while believing in modernism.

Juri Mykkänen, PhD

Suomen Kuvalehti No 5, 1950.