As integral to a Finnish home as a sauna, the ceramic and glass works of Kaj Franck distill objects to their purest form. And while the output of many Nordic design greats is reserved for the few, Franck’s democratic vision endures, with his most iconic and beloved pieces still accessible to the masses. We get frank about Franck
When a highly-skilled designer is passionately drawn to objects – their every detail, construction and provenance – it’s bound to yield iconic creations. Such was the case for Finnish visionary Kaj Franck, who became renowned for his work with ceramics and glass. “Kaj was amazing in the way that he was really fascinated by objects, how they’re made and where they come from,” recalls Tauno Tarna, a Finnish interior designer and close friend of Franck’s (Franck was also Tarna’s teacher at Helsinki’s Institute of Industrial Arts in the early 1960s). “This interest was so deep that whenever he travelled abroad to a new place, he would visit that country’s ethnographic museum first to study its objects and how different materials were used.”
Franck’s curiosity wasn’t a zeal that developed during his career as a designer, artistic director, teacher and later, art professor, but an affinity he had harboured since childhood. Born in 1911 in Vyborg, then part of the Grand Duchy of Finland and today belonging to Russia, Franck came from a family where creativity was fostered. “Kaj’s maternal grandfather was an important figure in Finnish art and architecture, while his mother was an artist as well,” Tarna says. “His aunt, meanwhile, used to take him to different exhibitions in Helsinki, which had a profound, early influence on him.” Franck’s mixed Swedish and German heritage from his mother’s and father’s sides, respectively, rendered him, as Tarna notes, “linguistically very gifted and intelligent”. His spoken fluency in Finnish, Swedish, German, English and French proved invaluable when he later embarked on various inspiration-inducing travels across the globe.
After his family relocated to Helsinki in the 1920s, Franck enrolled in the Central School of Arts and Crafts (today known as Aalto University), where he studied interior design and furniture drawing until 1932. He treasured his time at school and found an important mentor in his course leader, Arttu Brummer. “One key moment was when Arttu took the whole class to Stockholm to see an exhibition on the 1930s Funkis design movement – it was an eye-opening experience for Kaj,” Tarna says. Upon graduating, the budding designer honed his craft across a range of media, from textile design to catalogue illustration. Yet when the Winter War broke out in Finland in 1939 (followed by the Continuation War), Franck was called to military service, halting his nascent career for five years.
Related: 30+ beautiful candelabras, candlesticks, and tealight holders to warm up your winter months