Objects of desire

Over twenty international designers show their attitude towards mass production and consumption with works that combine fresh visuals and craftsmanship, in Helsinki.

Helsinki Design Museum’s Gallery is presenting an exhibition showcasing works by international designers that combine craftsmanship and conceptual approaches, as an alternative to mass-produced design. 

Top:Kristoffer Sundin and Museum Studio, Fungi Lamp, 2016 Above: Tuomas Markunpoika, Engineering Temporality, 2012

The exhibition merges a fresh visual idiom with methods of craftsmanship that can be serveral decades old, including bone china made with hand-carved moulds by London based designer Max Lamb, and the Fungi lamp by Kristoffer Sundin in association with Museum Studio, made by using mould from the tinder fungus that grows on tree trunks.

Matilda Beckman, How Dust this Feel?, 2015

The designers have studied the possibilities of materials developing completely new composite materials for their works. In Matilda Beckman’s How Dust this feel? furniture, she collects dust from flea markets to highlight the dangers of contemporary waist. The objects on display are meant to arouse affects and strong emotions in their users, such as desire and attachment in an overall breaking down of the global mechanisms of mass production and consumption. 

Max Lamb, Crockery Collection, 2012