Paavo Tynell (1890-1973) industrial designer, light designer
Born in Helsinki in 1890, Paavo Tynell studied at the Central School of Applied Arts (now the Helsinki University of Industrial Arts), and in 1906 began apprenticing as tinsmith at G.W. Sohlberg studio. While continuing his studies, in 1912 he advanced to fine blacksmith for the metal arts company Taidetakomo Koru. There he mastered delicate metalwork and finishing techniques, and made his first brass lamp. Graduating as “master craftsman” in 1913, Tynell went to Germany to pursue further studies, but was forced to return by the outbreak of the First World War. He began teaching metal arts at the School of Applied Arts in 1917, where future international Finnish designers such as Kaj Franck and Gunnel Nyman studied under him.
In 1918 Paavo Tynell started his own forging and design company, Oy Taito Ab, together with artist and industrial designer Eric O.W. Ehrström, sculptor Emil Wikström, silversmith Frans Nykänen, and art entrepreneur Gösta Serlachius. Employing a team of highly trained metalworkers, the company worked with brass, silver, tin, and even iron, creating silverware, candlesticks, vases, statues, decorative objects, gates, railings, and as would prove most fortuitous, lighting fixtures. With Tynell as head designer and director, “Taito” produced beautifully made modern designs that received international recognition, including awards at the 1929 Barcelona World Exhibition and the 1933 Milan Triennale.
Responding to the need for modern lighting solutions, in the 1930s Tynell focused the company on creating light fixtures and lamps. Under his direction, Taito advanced modern lighting through designs that were functional, pleasing, and produced to the highest standards. Their elegance, meticulous detailing, and atmospheric lighting made Tynell the most sought-after lighting designer in Finland, with leading Finnish architects commissioning him for their projects. Notably among these, he collaborated on all of Alvar Aalto’s major projects, including the Paimio Sanatorium (1933), Viipuri Library (1935), and Savoy Restaurant (1937). In 1936 Tynell designed the lighting for Helsinki’s Lasipalatsi (glass palace), an office and commercial complex considered a masterpiece of Finnish modernist architecture. He created the lighting for the Finnish Parliament House (1931), for hotels such as the Pallas (1938), and in the 1940s designed spectacular new chandeliers for the Helsinki Central Railway Station. In 1943 model designer Helena Turpeinen joined Taito, making the drawings for all of Tynell’s light fixture models, a close working relationship that led to their marrying in 1947. Helena herself also designed light fixtures, known for their inventive use of glass.
After the war, the only metal domestically available in Finland was brass, and Tynell took advantage, creating brass light fixtures that became his trademark. These marked his arrival in the US market, where in 1948 his lamps were presented at the newly inaugurated Finland House, a showcase for Finnish design on East 50th Street in Manhattan. Utilizing brass, glass, and leather in striking forms, and often decorated with perforated patterns, Tynell’s elegant lamps and fixtures received much acclaim. Among the most celebrated was a counterbalance ceiling-lamp with a lift mechanism that allowed the shade to be adjusted to a desired height, softly illuminating through the shade’s triangular perforations. The lamp was hailed in The New York Times as “the most useful contribution to the American interior.” There was a need in post-war modern design for light fixtures that were decorative and provided pleasing atmospheric lighting, requirements that Tynell’s designs met in a wide array of styles—chandeliers and pendant lamps, standing lamps and wall lamps—many with perforated brass shades. “For sheer decorative effect it would be hard to match the fixtures designed by Paavo Tynell…” declared the New York Times. He also received stellar press in magazines such as Interiors and Life, and in 1951 received the Museum of Modern Art’s prestigious Good Design Award.
Tynell’s publicity paved the way for important new commissions in the US, where he designed custom lighting for hotels, such as the legendary Fontainebleu in Miami, department stores and office buildings, as well as for private residences, all in brass and produced in Finland. Most prominent perhaps was his commission for the Office of the Secretary-General in the United Nations building in New York (1952), his lighting design an essential element of the monumental space’s lofty atmosphere. Also in 1952, Helsinki’s Hotel Vaakuna, considered a landmark in Finnish functionalist design, opened next to the Central Railway Station, its interiors perfectly complemented by Tynell’s graceful ceiling lights, sconces, and chandeliers.
In 1953 Taito sold the majority of its stock to Finnish lighting manufacturer Idman Oy, and the two company’s factories were combined. Tynell and most of his company stayed on, with Tynell continuing to design for Idman until 1958. The most popular of his designs for Idman proved his “Starry Sky” lamp. Incorporating polished and painted brass in a rectangular shape with curved edges, and utilizing tiny perforations and metal grillwork to achieve its starry light effect, the lamp was produced by Idman in different variations into the 1970s. In the US meanwhile, though Finland House was sold in 1957, the high demand for Tynell’s light fixtures found him designing for American companies Litecraft Inc. (1954-1958) and Lightolier Inc. (1958-1964). Officially retiring from by the beginning of the 1970s, Tynell continued to do special custom designs in his final years. Dubbed “The man who illuminated Finland,” Paavo Tynell died in Helsinki in 1973 at the age of 83.
Paavo Tynell succeeded in forging a distinctly modern style that was at once ornamental and sleek. Many of his chandeliers and light fixtures from the 1940s and 50s are highly recognizable for their poetic ornamental forms—metal cutout leaves, vines, snowflakes—as well as etched designs (sometimes in colored enamel), all of which play on light and shadow in pleasingly atmospheric ways. During the 1950s and ‘60s he also created more minimalist pieces, some inspired by forms from nature, others more overtly geometric. All of Tynell’s light fixtures were made to a standard of detailing and workmanship that made them costly in their own time, and makes them highly collectible today. As succinctly expressed in an early Finland House catalog, Tynell’s designs are testaments to his “lifelong effort to blend the harmony of lighting with the harmony of living.”
In 2012 the Helsinki Design Museum began digitalizing over 4,000 original design sketches and related photographs spanning Tynell’s entire career.
In 2018 the Danish design company Gubi relaunched a collection of his designs.
Exhibitions
Good Design Exhibit, The Museum of Modern Art, 1950-1951.
Design by Paavo Tynell, Alvar Aalto Museum, Jyväsky, 2005.
Sketches and Working plans by Paavo Tynell, Helsinki Design Museum Gallery 2015.
Prizes and Honors
First Barcelona World Exhibition design award, 1929.
Milan Triennale design award, 1933.
American Institute of Decorators First Award in Lighting Design, 1950.
The Museum of Modern Art First Award in Good Design, 1951.
American Institute of Decorators Excellence in Design Award,1952.
Publications
Chasing Light: The Archival Photographs and Drawings of Paavo Tynell, Ville Linna, Toivo Publishing 2020.
Paavo Tynell: Ja Taito Oy, Pap, Helsinki 2005.
Taito and Idman catalogues (1932-1964) digital archives: https://vintageinfo.be/
