Sun 5.5. Kultavuori – a journey into the world of Rudolf Koivu puppet theatre at noon
1 p.m. and 2 p.m. at Sederholm House. In Finnish.

The Sytkyt Puppet Theatre presents the story of the life and work of the famous fairytale illustrator Rudolf Koivu. Suitable for children aged 3 to 9 and the whole family. In the Children’s Town classroom. Loosely based on Rudolf Koivu’s fairytales Kultavuori (‘the golden mountain’, 1929) and Taikaharso (‘the magic veil’, 1934), and Raul Roine’s story Sadepisaroiden seikkailut (‘the adventures of the raindrops’, 1938), this puppet theatre performance is adapted by Juha Laukkanen. Visualisation by Mirjami Skarp and Arto Ollikainen. The soundtrack is comprised of excerpts of compositions by Tchaikovsky.

More information: Juha Laukkanen
+358 44 917 5983 or laukkanensytkyt@gmail.com.

Fri 10.5. , Kirstinkuja 4, 
reopens for the summer season 10 May – 29 September, Wed-Sun 11 a.m. – 5 p.m

Renovated a couple of years ago, this atmospheric museum at the foot of Linnanmäki hill gives visitors a unique look at life in workers’ houses in Helsinki in the 1900s, at the same time reflecting the everyday history of all Finns.

More information: Educator Sauli Seppälä
+358 9 3103 6493 or firstname.lastname@hel.fi.

Wed 15.5. TEE UUSIX workshop: 
The many uses of bicycle parts
1 p.m. to 2.30 p.m. at Hakasalmi Villa. In Finnish.

The attractions of the Made in Helsinki exhibition include a series of workshops where visitors can create recycled designs under the guidance of the craftsmen and women of the Uusix workshop.

More information: Uusix Information Officer Risto Miettinen
+358 9 3108 9517 or firstname.lastname@hel.fi.

Sat 18.5. Spring celebration, noon to 3:30 p.m. 
in Children’s Town at Sederholm House and the White Hall (Valkoinen sali)

Enjoy a traditional common school spring celebration with the whole family in the Children’s Town classroom. Elsewhere in Children’s Town, there are arts and crafts activities and even Grandmother’s House is in the spirit of spring. The children’s orchestra Laululaukku will perform in the White Hall. Traditional playground games will be played outside, and the celebration will conclude with a singalong of the Summer Hymn.

More  information: Workshop Leader Päivi Makkonen
+358 9 3103 6489 or firstname.lastname@hel.fi.

Wed 22.5. and Wed 29.5. Crocheting and recollections
1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. at Tuomarinkylä Manor Museum

Learn how to make ecological kitchen towels using bamboo thread at this crocheting workshop. Springtime recollections will bring back memories of spring cleaning, gardening and summer plans.

More  information: Workshop Leader Päivi Makkonen
+358 9 3103 6489 or firstname.lastname@hel.fi.

Wed 6.3. TEE UUSIX workshop:  Easter recycling
1 p.m. to 2.30 p.m. at Hakasalmi Villa

The attractions of the Made in Helsinki exhibition include a series of workshops where visitors can create recycled designs under the guidance of the craftsmen and women of the Uusix workshop. 

More information: Uusix Information Officer Risto Miettinen 
+358 9 3108 9517 or firstname.lastname@hel.fi.

Sun 10.3. Antiques clinic
noon to 3 p.m. at Hakasalmi Villa

At the antiques clinic, conservators give advice on the treatment and conservation of old objects with the help of practical examples. The programme includes demonstrations of how to restore the structures, surfaces and upholstery of ordinary furniture as well as more valuable pieces. Conservators specialising in gold-plating, framing, antique rugs and crystal chandeliers will also be on hand to dispense advice at their dedicated booths. Find out when is the right time for restoration work to avoid antique items being ruined by ill-timed restoration. 

More information: Conservator Ritva Mannermaa 
+358 9 3103 6646 or  firstname.lastname@hel.fi.

Tue 12.3. From albums to the exhibition
2 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the City Museum Picture Archives, Sofiankatu 4

In March 2013, the City Museum will open the Brylcreem exhibition at Hakasalmi Villa to give visitors a taste of Helsinki in the 1950s. Some of the photographs featured in the exhibition will be collected from member of the public, who are invited to bring photographs and memories of the 1950s from their albums at home. Photographs may be brought to the museum for scanning on Tuesday, 12 March, between 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Visitors will be able to choose one photograph to take home as either a digital file or a printed photo. 

More information: Researcher Yki Hytönen 
+358 9 3107 0991 or firstname.lastname@hel.fi.

Wed 13.3. “Recycling in the dollhouse” workshop
1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at Sederholm House

A workshop on making dollhouse furniture from recycled materials. A dollhouse can even be created in an empty milk carton or cardboard box. Only your imagination is the limit when toilet rolls, can lids and egg boxes are transformed into miniature furniture. Dollhouse enthusiast Helena Järvi will be on hand to give ideas and guide the activities. Participants are invited to bring materials from home. Materials should not include glass or other potentially hazardous substances. 

More information: Workshop Leader Marja Nykänen 
+358 9 3102 9842 or firstname.lastname@hel.fi.

Sun 17.3. Gustav Vasa’s Golden Retriever - musical drama game
1 p.m., 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. at Sederholm House (in Finnish)

This 30-minute musical drama game by Tomi Pulkkinen and Riitta Leivo is great fun for the whole family. Enjoy music, theatre and play while learning about the history and different districts of Helsinki. A pair of singing vagabonds are on their way to a party when they notice that a crown has gone missing from the city coat of arms. With the help of Arrow the dog, they begin tracking down the crown and experience exciting adventures in both the past and the present. Along the way, they meet King Gustav Vasa, the founder of Helsinki, the hardworking shopowner Johan Sederholm and the wise Aurora Karamzin who helps the children on their quest... 

More information: Tomi Pulkkinen firstname.lastname@welho.com.

Sun 17.3. Easter egg knitting and recollections
1 p.m. to 3 p.m. at Tuomarinkylä Manor Museum

Learn how to make knitted easter eggs, an exciting new twist on traditional arts and crafts. Share your recollections of Easters gone by while you work. 

More  information: Workshop Leader Päivi Makkonen 
+358 9 3103 6489 or firstname.lastname@hel.fi.

Sat 23.3. Decorating Easter twigs
11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Tuomarinkylä Manor Museum

In preparation for Palm Sunday, this workshop for the whole family involves decorating traditional Easter twigs. 

More  information: Educator Seija Haga
+358 9 3107 1562 or firstname.lastname@hel.fi.

FREE ENTRY
 

Helsinki City Museum opens its Christmas season on Advent Sunday, 2 December 2012.

Father Christmas – Santa Claus – will arrive at the Helsinki city-centre museum street Sofiankatu at 12 noon on Advent Sunday, 2 December, to light snow star decorations. Christmas carols will be sung and Christmas music will play in the City Museum branches, and the traditional Finnish Christmas pageant of singing boys or men playing the Three Wise Men will tour the museums. The public can decorate gingerbread and make Christmas decorations in workshops. Burgher’s House and the Tuomarinkylä Manor Museum will put on a Christmas look. The happenings are free of charge, as all City Museum programme at all times.

Sofiankatu will be decorated with evergreens on lampposts and with snow stars, modelled after the Christmas street of Kluuvikatu in 1938. This year the Sofiankatu Christmas street will be spiced up with the glögi mulled wine (a non-alcoholic version), served from a tent over the Advent season. On offer on Advent Sunday will also be rice porridge served from a field kitchen, and a street organ will play Christmas tunes.

On Advent Sunday, the City Museum’s main branch, Sofiankatu 4, will offer Christmas experiences for grown-ups in the midst of the current exhibition Design in Helsinki Films. Christmas music will be sung by Sari Savunen, soprano, and by the Sakarat choir. This year’s Christmas specialty, “Christmas balls”, will be knit in workshops. The history of Christmas in Helsinki will be opened up by documentary films and by researcher Jere Jäppinen at 15 (3 pm), who will talk about Christmas in Helsinki 200 years ago to celebrate Helsinki’s bicentennial as the Finnish capital. The Museum Shop will have a Christmas sale and raffle a basket full of books.

A family Christmas can be celebrated at Sederholm House, Aleksanterinkatu 16-18, with the newly opened Children’s Town exhibition. There will be family workshops in Christmas decorations and gingerbread decorating from 12−15. The Three Wise Men pageant will be performed in the museum’s inner courtyard at 13.  

Burgher’s House, Kristianinkatu 12, will offer visitors a tour to the Christmas of the past. This wooden inner-city house, more than 190 years old, will again lead visitors to Christmas preparations in the 1860’s style. The Advent Season opening event at the museum will take place from 12−16, with guides explaining old Christmas traditions to visitors. The Three Wise Men pageant will be performed in the museum’s inner courtyard at 14:30. The museum will retain its Christmasy look through 6 January 2013.

The Tuomarinkylä Manor Museum, Tuomarinkyläntie 7, will convey the Christmas spirit with the Elegance exhibition, which presents interior design in Helsinki from baroque to functionalism. The museum will host a gingerbread workshop from 13−16, and the Three Wise Men pageant will end the museum’s Advent Sunday at 16.  

ADVENT SUNDAY PROGRAMME AT HELSINKI CITY MUSEUM

The opening of an old-time Christmas street on Sofiankatu at 12 noon

Sofiankatu 4
11 am to 5 pm
Design in Helsinki Films exhibition

12 to 3 pm
Christmas decoration knitting workshop
Documentary films on Christmas in Helsinki at Kino Engel

12:30, 1:30 and 2:30 pm
Christmas carols sung with the Sakarat choir

1 and 2 pm
Sari Savunen, soprano, and Kimmo Ruotsala, piano: Christmas music

3 pm
Researcher Jere Jäppinen on Christmas in Helsinki 200 years ago

Sederholm House
Aleksanterinkatu 16–18
11 am to 5 pm
Children’s Town exhibition

12 to 3 pm
Gingerbread decoration and Christmas decoration workshops for families

1 pm
Three Wise Men Christmas pageant

Burgher’s House
Kristianinkatu 12, 11 am to 5 pm
An 1860’s dwelling decorated for Christmas to 6 January 2013

12 to 4 pm
Helsinki Christmas of the past

2:30 pm
Three Wise Men Christmas pageant

Tuomarinkylä Manor Museum
Tuomarinkyläntie 7, 11 am to 5 pm
Elegance exhibition with Christmas spirit

1 to 4 pm
Gingerbread decoration

4 pm
Three Wise Men Christmas pageant

FREE ADMISSION

On 21 November 2012, the Helsinki City Museum opened the Children's Town, located in the Sederholm House. This new kind of children’s museum invites children of all ages and their families to experience the history of Helsinki first-hand. 

In the Children’s Town, children can play in boutiques and workshops from 18th-century Helsinki, sit at a school desk in a 1930s primary school class and visit a grandma’s home from the 1970s. Realised with help of a sizeable bequest, the Children's Town is the first part of the City Museum's new museum centre, which will be created on the corner of the Senate Square in a few years’ time. Entry to the Children's Town is free, just like all other branches of the Helsinki City Museum.

In the Children's Town, children can begin to learn through play that life was quite different in olden times. Even adults might discover their inner child and find themselves scribbling on a writing slate, dialling a number on an old telephone – and be transported to the forgotten childhood years. After all, we were all children once, some long ago and some even now. The Children’s Town encourages us to share our childhood experiences across generations.

The basement of the Children’s Town offers a peek into 18th-century Helsinki. Children can unload cargo from a trading ship, help out in a cobbler's workshop and see what it was like being a boutique assistant. Meanwhile, the classroom upstairs transports you to a 1930s primary school, where morning prayers, nail inspections, strict discipline and reading and writing practices were the norm. Upstairs you will also find items and pictures of phenomena common to children growing up in Helsinki: work, hobbies and different families whose lives children can get to know by playing with dollhouses.

Tucked away at the end of the upstairs section you will find a small and homely grandma's home from the 1970s. Everyone is welcome to reminisce and play at grandma's home, and all items can be handled. At weekends, you can share your memories with our museum grandma and grandpa. The museum’s grandmas and grandpas are the new volunteer workers of the City Museum.

The City Museum has a long tradition of children’s activities

The Helsinki City Museum was one of the first Finnish museums to introduce exhibitions for children in the 1970s and hired an educator. Children’s activities were improved in the 1990s, and the number of educators continued to grow. The Children’s Museum, opened in Tuomarinkylä in 1992, became a favourite destination for kindergartens and families alike, despite its remote location. Meanwhile, the School Museum located in Kalevankatu since 2000 offered old-fashioned school lessons to both former and current schoolchildren.

In 2010, as the financial situation of Helsinki grew tighter, the City Museum had to consolidate its operations and give up some of its premises. It was decided to concentrate the best parts of both the Children’s Museum and the School Museums in the Sederholm House, which is better accessible to the public. In the midst of the falling economic climate, the City Museum was surprised and delighted to receive a sizeable bequest from Kirsti Suvanto, a member of the museum friends association, which made the creation of the Children's Town possible.

Children’s Town
Sederholm House
Aleksanterinkatu 16–18 (entrance from the backyard)
tel. 09 3103 6529

Open 
Tue–Fri 1–5 pm
Sat–Sun 11 am – 5 pm

FREE ENTRY
 

Helsinki City Museum has concluded six-week long excavations that covered a one hundred metre-long district heating pipe trench at Senate Square.

Due to the schedule of the worksite it was possible to explore the site in greater detail. Special focus was put on an old cemetery. The bones of the deceased provided information about the diseases of past Helsinki residents.

A rusted district heating pipe burst at the corner of Aleksanterinkatu and Katariinankatu at the beginning of September. Helsingin Energia decided to lay the new district heating pipe across the southern section of Senate Square. Archeologically, Senate Square is among the most interesting sites in the city centre of Helsinki since remains from the 17th and 18th centuries are well preserved underneath the pavement. Based on the Antiquities Act, the worksite required salvage excavations. With the autumn weather and unhurried schedule of the worksite permitting, it was possible to carry out the excavations more thoroughly than normally.

Based on old maps and prior excavations, it was established that there are graves underneath the western section of the square. The Church of Helsinki, most recently Ulrika Eleonora Church, and cemetery were located in the area from the 1640s to the end of the 1820s. Congestion of the small cemetery and the smell from shallow graves became unbearable in the 1780s, and a new cemetery was established in 1790 at the current location of Vanha kirkkopuisto Park. Ulrika Eleonora Church was demolished in 1827 and the old churchyard was covered by the grand Senate Square.

The excavations that began at the end of September started at the eastern and middle section of the Senate Square where sections of base wall belonging to two different buildings and some trivial artefacts were discovered. The main focus of the excavations was on the eastern section of the square where the old cemetery is located. The pipe trench revealed almost 260 bodies that were documented by photographing and measuring geographical data with a tachymeter. The majority of the deceased were reburied in the same location only deeper beyond the reach of the site’s diggers.

The excavations provided information about the graveyard’s structure and the burial rituals of the 17th and 18th centuries. Archaeologists were surprised by the density and shallowness of burials: bodies lay elbow-to-elbow in four to five tightly packed layers, the uppermost only 60 cm below the current square level. Coffins had decayed and only a few artefacts were discovered: coffin handles and fittings, a ring, necklaces and a pair of shoe buckles. The scarcity of discoveries is explained by the 18th century custom of wrapping bodies in shrouds instead of clothes and by the fact that probably poor people were buried at the edge of the churchyard.

An osteological study was carried out in one section of the cemetery excavations. Archaeologists specialising in osteology, i.e., study of bones, carefully lifted the bones of approximately 40 bodies for laboratory studies. The age, height and gender of the deceased were determined. 

The bones were studied for traces of diseases in order to document the history of diseases of Finns. The study of old bones also benefits medicine, providing information, among other things, on the evolution of the tuberculosis bacterium and the link between diseases and environmental factors. Once examined, the deceased that have undergone the osteological analysis will be reburied in one of Helsinki’s cemeteries.

The historical Christmas calendar of the Helsinki City Museum raises Christmas spirit. Everyday a window reveals stories about the history of Christmas traditions in Helsinki.

This time, the museum’s very popular series of Christmas calendars takes us to Sofiankatu in the old city centre in honour of Helsinki’s 200th anniversary as the capital of Finland. In addition to the Finnish- and Swedish-language calendars, an English-language version is now also available due to public demand. It is a great way to share Finnish Christmas traditions with foreigners.

For centuries Christmas has been celebrated on Sofiankatu, one of the oldest streets in Helsinki. Some 200 years ago at dusk during Christmas season, men dressed as Christmas goats carrying horns on their head would wander the street, then called Itäinen Kirkkokatu. Maids in bourgeois houses would set the Christmas table with lutefisk, barley porridge and Christmas beer.

Helsinki became the capital of Finland in 1812. City scenery was transformed as Senate Square and the grand St Nicholas' Church rose at the end of the street, renamed Sofiankatu. Christmas traditions also changed in the 19th century, as Christmas trees, Christmas cards and Christmas flowers were introduced to city residents.

Christmas activity moved to Aleksanterinkatu in the 20th century, which became the city’s Christmas Street with a row of Christmas window displays and shining lights. The light of the electric candles on the Christmas tree in Senate Square and the smile of Saint Lucia descending the stairs of the Cathedral, however, were still able to emanate to the quiet Sofiankatu.

Today, Sofiankatu in the historical Market Quarter is once again filled with Christmas hustle and bustle. Today’s Christmas in Helsinki is a mix of old and new traditions that you can explore window by window with the help of the Helsinki City Museum’s historical Christmas calendar.

The historical Christmas calendar has been created by curators Jere Jäppinen (text) and Jaana Mellanen (illustrations) of Helsinki City Museum.

The price is €6 (incl. VAT). The calendar is available from the Museum Shop, Sofiankatu 4, and the other exhibition locations of the Helsinki City Museum. It is also available from Akateeminen kirjakauppa.

Uusimaa is filled with memories of the past in a great many museums that are now all easily available at www.museo-opas.fi. 

The extensive and easy-to-use website presents in Finnish, Swedish and English a couple of hundred destinations varying from great national museums to unique small museums. Tailored itineraries lure you to participate in museum expeditions.

The Museum Guide Uusimaa helps you to discover over 180 museums and through them the local art treasures and rich cultural history. The colourful group of Uusimaa museums extends from cosy cottages to mighty mansions, and you can find a museum in a hospital, dairy, factory and even a mine. These museums display an endless plethora of memories regarding everyday life and festivities, great men and ordinary people, dolls and cannons, chairs and paintings, guitars and hammers…

The Museum Guide includes a short presentation and photos of each museum providing good insight into each destination when planning a museum trip. Besides the familiar museums, you can use the Museum Guide to explore new places and especially the numerous small museums in the region about which it has been difficult to find information in the past. You can search using a museum name, topic or services, among other things. You are sure to find something for all ages and interests.

The Museum Guide Uusimaa also offers a selection of tailored museum itineraries where destinations have been grouped according to a topic or location. Suitable museums situated near each other and covering a similar topic have been paired up to enliven a weekend stroll, for example. The duration of the itineraries ranges from a few hours to several days, and they have been created separately for travel by bicycle, car, boat and train.

The Museum Guide a joint effort

Museum portals have been created all over Finland in recent years. Western and Eastern Uusimaa have had their separate portals, but a service covering the whole of Uusimaa has been lacking until now. 

The Museum Guide Uusimaa was a joint effort of three main contributors: Western Uusimaa Provincial Museum based in Raseborg, Helsinki City Museum serving as the Central Uusimaa Provincial Museum and Porvoo Museum serving as the Eastern Uusimaa Provincial Museum.

Museum Guide Uusimaa
www.museo-opas.fi
www.museiguide.fi
 

The Design in Helsinki Films exhibition in Sofiankatu 4 is open 9–22. Actor Jukka-Pekka Palo performs songs from Finnish films at 18, 19 and 20. Movies on Helsinki are shown in Kino Engel all day. 

A Place with a View exhibition in the Sederholm house  is open 11–22. The exhibition ends on August 26th.

The Made in Helsinki exhibition in the Hakasalmi villa is open 11–22. The Uusix Workshops demonstrates recycled material workshops 18–20.

Family-friendly programme at Tuomarinkylä Manor Museum 17–20. The Ammuu! band plays music for children at 19. The Stylish exhibition is open 11–20.

FREE ENTRY

Photo: Stefan Bremer

Helsinki City Museum’s most extensive exhibition of the World Design Capital year, Made in Helsinki 1700–2012, showcases the roots of Helsinki design all the way to the time when the concept of design was not familiar in Finland. It reveals surprising viewpoints into the world of design items and hints that the history of Finnish design could be told in a different manner. 

Various items from 18th-century Helsinki to the modern times are on display: from silver beakers to enamel buckets, square pianos to curtain tassels and millinery hats to outdoor overalls. Helsinki’s handicraft tradition is very much alive today, and the exhibition showcases the masterpieces of modern craftsmen side by side with museum pieces. The exhibition is free of charge, as the City Museum always is.

The Made in Helsinki exhibition displays a charming variety of items. Here different eras and aesthetics shake hands: the elaborate details of 19th-century hats are echoed in Minna Parikka’s shoes, and the graphics featured in advertisement boards from the 1930s is once again topical. Occasionally, styles and tastes also clash: imposing bombe chest of drawers and functional chairs made of steel are worlds apart, and the sample boards from the Salin twine factory are delightful in their abundance.

Both the continuity and the change in design and handicrafts are clearly visible in the exhibition. The silversmiths and carpenters of modern-day Helsinki, such as Juju Jewellery by three designers and the Ranka woodworking shop, continue to work with the same tools used by their 18th-century colleagues. Although the latest design is often incorporeal, ancient craftsmanship, such as gilding, is still alive.

The capital of Finnish design

Helsinki was a design capital before anyone even knew what the word ‘design’ meant. The craftsmen of 18th-century Helsinki were well aware of the latest techniques and trends of their time. In the 19th century, the status of capital city brought to Helsinki a growing number of skilled craftsmen and many discerning customers, too. Luxury craft items, such as settees, gilded mirrors and pianos, were acquired to wealthy homes.

In the latter half of the 19th century, industrialisation revolutionised production. The shape and maker of an object were separated from each other as the factories brought along design. The craftsman was both the designer and the manufacturer, but now the appearance of an object had to suit not only the customer’s taste and wishes but also the requirements of mechanical production. The heralds of Helsinki design were the 1930s steel pipe furniture, especially the Heteka steel spring bed.

The rise of Finnish design from the 1950s onwards made Helsinki the design capital of Finland. In addition to well-known design products, other well-designed but less famous items, such as the Opa steel kettles, were also made in Helsinki. Female masters produced discreet and elegant studio fashion and created new design to meet their customer’s day-to-day needs. A good example of this is the housewife from Helsinki who designed the EasyBeasy overalls at her kitchen table in 1970 and started a business to manufacture them.

The jewels of Helsinki handicrafts from three centuries in the exhibition publication

The Made in Helsinki exhibition is accompanied by a Finnish book of the same title, which highlights the treasures of the City Museum. The museum’s researchers and conservators have found a lot of new information and stories about the items that seem to live and breathe in the book’s impressive photographs. With its imposing design and fine finishing and print quality, the book won the Book of the Year category at the 2011 Antalis Design & Print Awards.

Modern-day handicrafts at the Uusix workshops

The new, modern-day handicrafts and their makers are also introduced in conjunction with the exhibition. At the Uusix workshops, the unemployed create inventive products from recycled materials that can also be purchased at the museum.

Made in Helsinki 1700–2012 is part of the programme of the World Design Capital year and Helsinki 200 Years as the Capital of Finland jubilee year.

Exhibition publication

Made in Helsinki 1700–2012 – helsinkiläisen työn helmiä kolmelta vuosisadalta. Helsingin kaupunginmuseo 2011. 276 pages, bound. ISBN 978-952-272-067-2. Price 32 e (VAT incl.). Sold in the Hakasalmi Villa, Museum Shop, Sofiankatu 4, and Akateeminen kirjakauppa.

Made in Helsinki 1700–2012
Hakasalmi Villa, Mannerheimintie 13b
13.6.2012 –1.9.2013 
Wed–Sun 11 am – 5 pm, Thu 11 am – 7 pm
FREE ENTRY

The Helsinki City Museum and Palmia Meeting and Banquet Services revisit the success of the historical café for a final time at the Sederholm House, Aleksanterinkatu 18, during Helsinki Week on 9–17 June 2012, from 11 am to 6 pm. 

This year marks the bicentennial jubilee of Helsinki as the capital of Finland, and the museum celebrates the occasion by having coffee in the style of the young capital. 

It was then, in the early 19th century, that modern café culture began to flourish in Helsinki when a number of enterprising Swiss master bakers established confectioneries in the city. 

During the Café Week, the Sederholm House at Senate Square in the heart of Empire Helsinki provides a wonderful setting to partake in 19th century pastries and cakes accompanied by the music of the era.

Helsinki became the capital of the Grand Duchy of Finland in 1812, and soon the young capital’s café culture was also transformed. At the time, Swiss master bakers were spreading throughout Europe, and a number of them settled in Helsinki. 

The first was Christian Menn in 1817, but several of his countrymen and competitors followed in the 1820s and 1830s. The Swiss established the first confectionery-cafés, which served fine pastries with coffee, tea, cocoa, wine, and liqueur. 

Having coffee and pastries became highly fashionable among the emerging bourgeoisie and the university crowd that moved to Helsinki in 1828. Cafés were particularly popular among gentlewomen, who now had a respectable way to eat outside the home.

At home, people served fine pastries – either home-made or bought from confectioneries – as the dessert course at feasts. On weekdays, coffee was normally served with bagels and rusks. The popularity of home baking increased in the first half of the 19th century, and recipes became more diverse. There were many cookery books being published in Sweden, and they were also avidly read in Finland. The cookery books had many recipes for baking, and there were also special confectionery recipe books.

In the early 19th century, pastries began to shift towards a more modern style. The new French ideal emphasised the flavours of the ingredients, and the use of spices became more understated and refined. Increasingly more often, pastries were baked in the oven in the modern way, puff pastries and meringues were in fashion, and cakes and biscuits were making their entrance. Jams were widely used, and people were paying more attention to the appearance, form, colour, and decoration of pastries.
 

Café Empire’s delicacies

Café Empire’s selection is a meeting of old traditions and the relative newcomers of the early 19th century. Pies and pasties made with puff pastry and filled with plentiful, strongly flavoured filling were popular in the 18th century, but in the 19th century they became more simplistic and refined. Gherkin gives the meat pies their slight tartness. The rich sour cabbage kulebyaka is a taste of St Petersburg.

Of the sweet pastries of the 18th century, the fluffy almond pie remained popular through the 1800s, as did the textured apple cake, which gets its homely flavours of rye and spices from apple sauce and grated sweet and sour bread.

The 19th century saw the fashionable puff pastry being used to bake more elaborate pastries such as canapés. The crescent moons with apple filling were a precursor of the modern Finnish Christmas pastry. Meringues, which were sometimes filled with jam, were a fashionable and luxurious delicacy.

The Swiss master bakers also brought with them the skill to make aesthetically pleasing pastries, which were often made with layers of shortcrust and jam and topped with sugar icing like Café Empire’s red and white lingonberry pastry.

The biscuit selection began to grow in the 19th century. Almond, which has been used widely in baking since the Middle Ages, gives the chewy, marzipan-like almond biscuits their strong flavour. The 1810s introduced Helsinki to Russian pryaniki, honey-flavoured gingerbread, which has been baked in Russia since the 17th century.

Chamber music in a café

In Café Empire, young musicians from the Degree Programme in Music at the Metropolia University of Applied Sciences and the Sibelius Academy will perform daily at 12 a.m., 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. chamber music that was popular in the 19th century.

Café Empire
Sederholm House
Aleksanterinkatu 18
during Helsinki Week 
on 9–17 June 2012, from 11 am to 6 pm

A Place with a View exhibition at Sederholm House gives visitors a glimpse of the homes of Pihlajamäki residents and suburban life in Helsinki. The exhibition is a part of the Helsinki World Design Capital programme.

Suburban life is something many Finns are familiar with. From the mid-1950s to the late 1970s, Finland saw the construction of hundreds of thousands of homes in new residential areas outside city centres. 

People were keen to leave their cramped and worn-down city flats for clean, well-lit and warm suburban homes with all modern comforts. The rise of the suburbs played a key role in Finland’s urbanisation and modernisation.

Pihlajamäki was built in the early 1960s. It was one of the first suburbs designed as a whole and built using the new prefabrication technology. 

While the architecturally important area is protected in the town plan and has been appointed a nationally significant cultural environment, it is also an example of an area that has been closely associated with a discussion about suburbs with negative undertones. 

A Place with a View – Recollections of Pihlajamäki is a photography exhibition showcasing another perspective, that of local residents. 

The exhibition at Sederholm House provides visitors with access to places usually off-limits to outsiders: the homes of ordinary people, behind modern façades. This means that you can now take a tram to the suburb.

The Place with a View exhibition is based on the book by the same name, a compilation of interviews by Kristiina Markkanen and photographs by Lidia Tirri that was published by the City Museum in January. 

In their book, Markkanen and Tirri wanted to find out what the residents of Pihlajamäki thought about their neighbourhood, which has aroused a lot of discussion. 

The photographs in the book and exhibition lead to spacious and well-lit homes where people obviously enjoy living, and the residents’ interviews open up a new perspective on architecture and urban planning. 

On the opening day of the exhibition, 12 May 2012, the book will be available at Sederholm House for the special price of €15 (normal price €28).

The exhibition is a part of the Helsinki World Design Capital programme.

A Place with a View – Recollections of Pihlajamäki
 
In Sederholm House, Aleksanterinkatu 18 
12.5.–26.8.2012 
Wed–Sun 11–17, Thu 11–19
 

FREE ENTRY

The main exhibitions of the Helsinki Photography Biennial 2012 under the theme of “city and urbanity” are organised by the Finnish Union of Artist Photographers in cooperation with the Helsinki City Museum in the Hakasalmi Villa and in the Sederholm House in March–April 2012. 

Copyright © Christina Seely. Metropolis 40°47' N 73°58' W, from series: LUX, 2006–2008.

Over 30 Finnish and international photographic artists are presented in the two museums. The main exhibitions are curated by a team whose members are photographers Ari Kakkinen, Marko Karo, Harri Pälviranta, Kari Soinio and Hanna Weselius together with Jari Harju, a researcher from the Helsinki City Museum.

The works in the main exhibitions offer perspectives on the kind of urban space we construct for ourselves and the changes that are taking place in cities across the world. 

However, inhabitants of cities are also in focus: how they experience the urban space, how they use it, and perhaps also mould it for their own needs. The featured artists’ subjective viewpoints on the city offer viewers very different experiences, borrowing for a moment different ways of thinking about and living in the urban environment. 

In his work Urban Flow, the Hungarian-born Adam Magyar explores the motion and rhythm of the city by using a technology familiar from finish line photos in sports competitions. The Finnish artist Noomi Ljungdell constructs urban topographies in which she has reinterpreted and transposed photographs into abstract landscapes of floating words.

Current and global issues are also addressed by many artists. The Paperless by the Finnish photographer Katja Tähjä showcases immigrants living in European cities without papers. The protagonists in the works of the Romanian documentary photographer Dana Popa are women who leave their poor home country to become prostitutes in European cities. 

The main exhibitions also feature moving image works, such as the video installation J. Street Project by Susan Hiller. The project searches for signs of the history of Jews in contemporary German cities. The result is not a historical document, but a work of art which transports the viewer into a landscape of forgetting and remembering.

No Exit – Urban Space: Isidro Blasco, Chad Gerth, Stephen Gill, Anthony Haughey, Susan Hiller, Simo Karisalo, Kalle Lampela, Jukka Lehtinen, Noomi Ljungdell, Adam Magyar, Peter Margonelli, David McMillan, Sohei Nishino, Jiang Pengyi, William Raban, Abigail Reynolds, Jani Ruscica, Christina Seely, Christopher Thomas

No Exit – Urban Being: Juha Allan Ekholm, Nina Berman, Tuukka Kaila, Enrique Metinides, Jukka Onnela, Sami Perttilä, Salla Pesonen, The Pier (Nils Petter Löfstedt, Erik Vestman), Dana Popa, Nicolas Provost, Roskakaupunki (Sirpa Kinnunen, Emilia Kurila, Teemu Lehmusruusu), Maija Saksman, Sanni Seppo, Katja Tähjä, Michael Wolf

In addition to the main exhibitions, HPB12 also expands in a series of events into the museums, galleries and other venues as well as public spaces in the Helsinki metropolitan area. HPB12 mobilized an unprecedented number of cultural actors in the greater Helsinki area, with more than 60 individual events having already been submitted.

For the full programme, please visit www.hpb.fi.

No Exit – Urban Space, Hakasalmi Villa 2.3.–22.4.2012 
No Exit – Urban Being, Sederholm House 2.3.–29.4.2012 
Open Wed–Sun 11–17, Thu 11–19
 

Design in Helsinki Films is a shared exhibition of the Helsinki City Museum and KAVA, the National Audiovisual Archive. The exhibition opens our eyes to the enchanting visual experience of nostalgic Finnish films from the era between the 1930s and the 1960s and highlights their makers, who are too often left in the dark. The exhibition opens at Sofiankatu 4 on 15 February 2012 and the admission is free of charge, as it always is at the City Museum.

The photographs, film excerpts, costumes and other items on display at the exhibition present the importance of design and the cityscape in films shot in Helsinki between the 1930’s and the 1960’s. Design and architecture had a huge impact on the imagery of films, as they allowed the creation of different urban atmospheres.

Designer costumes of the films and make-believe homes and environments commented on the prevailing reality and exaggerated contemporary phenomena. The protagonist of Hulda of Juurakko (1937) works as a maid at Judge Soratie's impressive home, which is scrumptiously set by combining the fashionable styles of the time: art deco and functionalism. 

The Suominen family, along with many other film characters, lived in the functionalist Töölö district, which was particularly fashionable in the 1930s and 1940s. The atelier of the mad artist in the film Gas, Inspector Palmu (1961) is decorated with design novelties of the time. In the film A Time of Roses (1969) the inflatable Blow chairs and patterned Marimekko fabrics depicted the future – all the way to the year 2012!

Design in Helsinki Films pays tribute to the less-known makers of Finnish films: the set designers and costumiers who created the imaginative locations and the glamour of the stars. At the same time, the exhibition offers a peek to the lives of design professionals at the film studios of Helsinki in a time during which large-scale movie industry flourished, even in Finland.

In addition to information and visual stimuli, the exhibition offers a cheerful, nostalgic trip to the Helsinki of the past, the views and life of which is recorded even in fictional films. In many of the films Helsinki, and its change, plays a major role. SF Parade (1939) proudly presents the brand new functionalist city, but in the films from the 1960s, the demolition spree and concrete colossi typical of the time are occasionally also viewed in a negative light.

The exhibition is complemented by a magazine made in the spirit of old movie magazines and also an extensive supplementary programme. A fashion show teaches us the beauty tricks of 1930s film stars and a reminiscence workshop allows us to travel back to the golden era of the block cinema theatre. At the drama tours, a know-it-all director’s assistant reveals the secrets of the film studios.

The curator of the exhibition, award-winning set designer and film history enthusiast Minna Santakari, has created an impressive setting to the visual richness of the old films. The handsome art nouveau Sonck Hall at the main building of the City Museum at Sofiankatu 4 is glowing with the reds and golds of the movie theatres in the olden days.

The exhibition is a part of the programme for Helsinki’s World Design Capital year.

Design in Helsinki Films
Sofiankatu 4
Open 15 Feb 2012 to 13 Jan 2013 
Mon–Fri 9 am to 5 pm, Thu 9 am to 7 pm, Sat–Sun 11 am to 5 pm.
FREE ENTRY

Film series at Orion

Films featured in the exhibition are shown throughout the year at the Orion theatre of KAVA. Tickets €5.50/with the club card €4.50/for children under the age of 12 €2. The spring programme can be found online at: http://www.kava.fi/esitykset/kevat-2012/design-helsinki. 

The exhibition’s supplementary programme in spring and summer 2012.

In a photographic book about Pihlajamäki, stories told by residents guide the reader to everyday life in the suburbs of Helsinki. The book, which is called A Place with a View – Recollections of Pihlajamäki and published by Helsinki City Museum, and an exhibition compiled on its basis are part of the programme of Helsinki’s World Design Capital year.

In A Place with a View, Helsinki City Museum turns its gaze at the suburbs of Helsinki – precisely the place where ordinary people lead ordinary lives. Pihlajamäki, which turns 50 this year, is an example of an area that has been touched up close by a discussion about suburbs with negative undertones. The perspective of its residents, on the other hand, has often remained hidden. That is not the case this time as the residents’ own experience is the main subject in A Place with a View.

The Pihlajamäki suburb was built in the early 1960s as one of the first suburban entities where new prefabricated building techniques produced affordable quality construction near nature areas. The architecturally important area is protected in the town plan and has been appointed a nationally significant cultural environment.

The book, which is based on editor Kristiina Markkanen’s interviews and Lidia Tirri’s photographs, allows the residents to describe their everyday lives and homes behind the modern facades. Markkanen and Tirri wanted to find out what the residents of Pihlajamäki thought about their neighbourhood, which has aroused a lot of discussion.

The photographs in the book lead to spacious and well-lit homes where people obviously enjoy living, and the residents’ interviews open up a new perspective on architecture and urban planning. Professor Kirsi Saarikangas has written an article in the book about the places of memory in a suburban space. The texts in the book are in Finnish and English.

Exhibition in Pihlajamäki and Viikki and at Sederholm House

The book’s photographs and texts will be compiled into a photographic exhibition parts of which will be displayed at the Pihlajamäki shopping centre in February and at Viikki library in March–April. The entire exhibition will be on display at Sederholm House as of May. Then, even an accidental tourist can get to see how design surrounds the residents of Helsinki outside the city centre, too.

A Place with a View – Recollections of Pihlajamäki

At the Pihlajamäki shopping centre from 4 to 26 February 2012, Wed–Thu 1–8 pm, Sat–Sun 11 am–5 pm.
At Viikki library from 8 March to 18 April 2012, Mon–Thu 9 am–8 pm, Fri 9 am–6 pm, Sat 10 am–4 pm.
At Sederholm House, Aleksanterinkatu 18, from 12 May to 26 August 2012, Wed–Sun 11 am–5 pm, Thu 11 am–7 pm.

Kristiina Markkanen and Lidia Tirri: A Place with a View – Recollections of Pihlajamäki. Helsinki City Museum 2011. 128 pages, bound. ISBN 978-952-272-101-3. Price €28 (incl. VAT).

The price is €28 (incl. VAT). The book is available for sale at the Museum Shop, Sofiankatu 4.

A quarter of the world's population live below the poverty line, but what does it mean? The new online exhibition Explore Poverty hopes to clarify the concept of poverty.Explore-poverty.org is the result of international cooperation between Helsinki City Museum, Musée d’histoire de la ville de Luxembourg, Minnesota Historical Society, DASA Arbeitswelt Ausstellnung and Köln International School of Design.

    www.explore-poverty.org

Helsinki City Museum will open its Christmas season in the traditional way on the first Advent Sunday 27 November 2011. In Sederholm House, the whole family can prepare for Christmas in the manner of Doghill. Burgher’s House and Tuomarinkylä Manor Museum will open bedecked in their Christmas décor. The traditional carol play will bring us Christmas spirit yet again. The event is free of charge, as the City Museum always is.

The main building of the City Museum at Sofiankatu 4, open between 11 am and 5 pm, is covered by scaffolds due to roof renovation work and the exhibition halls are closed due to exhibition change. Traditional Christmas spirit can, however, be enjoyed at Kino Engel 2, watching documentaries of Christmas celebrations in Helsinki from decades gone by. Christmas discounts will begin at the museum shop, even before Christmas so that gifts oozing with the history of Helsinki can find their way under many a Christmas tree.

Sederholm House at Aleksanterinkatu 18 is the perfect setting for a Christmas family event with the Omens and predictions at Doghill exhibition based on children’s books by Mauri Kunnas. Between noon and 3 pm you will have the chance to meet an old-fashioned Father Christmas, make Christmas decorations, decorate gingerbread as well as sing and play to Christmas tunes performed by the Sakarat Choir. The traditional City Museum’s carol play by the HOL Choir will take place in the courtyard of Sederholm House at 1 pm. There will be a raffle for a packed Christmas gift book basket at the Advent event.

Burgher’s House at Kristianinkatu 12 is a feast for the senses taking you back to the Christmas days of yore. The oldest wooden house in the central city area, over 190 years old, will take us back to Christmas as it was in the 1860s. In the opening Advent event at Burgher’s House from noon to 4 pm, guides will tell about how Christmas was celebrated in the past. The traditional carol play will take place in the courtyard at 2:30 pm. The house will remain in its Christmas decor until 8 January 2012.

Tuomarinkylä Manor Museum at Tuomarinkyläntie 7 will be filled with Christmas spirit as the halls of the Elegance exhibition present the period history of Helsinki. You will have the chance to decorate gingerbread between 2 pm and 4 pm, and the day will end at the Manor’s main entrance with a carol play at 4 pm.

TRADITIONAL CHRISTMAS SEASON OPENING

IN THE HELSINKI CITY MUSEUM

ON THE FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Sofiankatu 4, open 11 am – 5 pm

CHRISTMAS SHOPPING AND DOCUMENTARY FILMS ON YULETIDE

12 am – 3 pm films on Helsinki Christmas traditions, Kino Engel

                      Christmas sale at the Museum Shop

Sederholm House, Aleksanterinkatu 18, open 11 am – 5 pm

Children’s exhibition: Omens and predictions at Doghill

FAMILY PROGRAM HOSTED BY TRADITIONAL FINNISH SANTA

12 am – 3 pm traditional gingerbread decoration

                     Christmas crafts for children

                     Christmas sing-a-long in Finnish

1 pm             traditional carol play in the courtyard

Burgher’s House, Kristianinkatu 12, open 11 am – 5 pm

A BOURGEOIS HOME OF THE 1860S DECORATED FOR CHRISTMAS

12 am – 4 pm 19^th century Christmas traditions from Helsinki

2.30 pm        traditional carol play in the courtyard

Tuomarinkylä Manor Museum open 11 am – 5 pm

Exhibition: Elegance

CHRISTMAS IN A MANOR
2 pm – 4 pm  traditional gingerbread decoration

4 pm              traditional carol play in the courtyard

F R E E    E N T R Y

Sederholm House, the oldest building in downtown Helsinki, hosts a children’s exhibition based on the charming dog illustrations by Mauri Kunnas from 1 October 2011 to 29 January 2012. The exhibition invites children of all ages to the rural Finland of the mid-1800s. The exhibition texts are available in Finnish and Swedish.

This exhibition is the first children’s exhibition in the Sederholm House. It leads up to the end of the year 2012, when the oldest house in Helsinki will be dedicated to the youngest people in Helsinki. Sederholm House will then be a permanent home to various exhibitions and other activities for children.

Sederholmin house 
Aleksanterinkatu 18, 
tel. (09) 3103 6529.

Open
1.10.2011–29.1.2012 
Wed–Sun 11–17, 
Thu 11–19.

FREE ENTRY
 

The Helsinki Horizons exhibition in Sofiankatu 4 is open 9–22. Movies on Helsinki are shown in Kino Engel all day.

The Women's Rooms exhibition in the Sederholm house is open 11–22.

The Out to Sea exhibition in the Hakasalmi villa is open 11–22. Music at 19, 20 and 21.

Family-friendly programme at Tuomarinkylä Manor Museum 17–20. The Aarne Alligaattori band plays music for children at 19, and night music is played in the manor at 20. The Stylish exhibition is open 11–21.

F R E E    E N T R Y

The City Museum offers lots of fun for people enjoying the summer in Helsinki. We have not forgotten country cousins visiting the city or foreign summer guests either.

The last summer of the basic exhibition at Sofiankatu 4

The Helsinki City Museum’s main building exhibition Helsinki Horizons is on display for the last summer. The exhibition offers a view over 450 years of the city’s history and is on display until 28 August 2011. You still have time to see the Työmies pack of cigarettes or a genuine 1990s telephone card before the exhibition closes and work starts on a new exhibition. Helsinki Horizons is an excellent means for residents and tourists alike to explore the history of the capital in a nutshell.

Nostalgic Helsinki-themed films are being shown in Kino Engel 2 all summer. The cinema provides an excellent refuge from hot weather for foreign guests especially on summer Saturdays when the programme focuses on English-language films.

Perfect summer gifts can be found at the Museum Shop, even for those who already have everything. How about a cast-iron herring pan or a barometer based on an 18^th-century model?

Picture Paths exhibition on electrical cabinets

Museum experiences are now also available outdoors: the Picture Paths exhibition spreads into the city streets for the summer. Old photographs attached to electrical cabinets can be viewed online and at the following locations: Katajanokka, Runeberginkatu, Helsinginkatu, Länsi-Pasila, Malmi and Herttoniemi.

Summer museums are open

The Worker Housing Museum and Burgher’s House, both summer museums of the City Museum, are open until early September. In the cosy Worker Housing Museum you can explore the history of everyday life in nine small stove rooms that have been furnished as homes of the people who lived there during different periods. New this summer at the museum is a historical flower bed, where traditional ornamental plants of a worker’s garden flourish.

The Burgher’s House showcases the middle-class life of the 1860s in the heart of Kruununhaka. The oldest surviving wooden house still in its original location in the central city area is certainly a sight worth seeing.

Take a trip to Tuomarinkylä Manor

The Tuomarinkylä Manor Museum located in northern Helsinki is a great destination for a summer trip. The Elegance exhibition showcases items and interiors from baroque to functionalism. After exploring the exhibition, you can have a picnic in the park surrounding the manor.

Tram Museum is open every summer day

The Tram Museum located in Töölö presents the history of trams from a passenger’s perspective. Tourists like to stamp their tickets with the old stamping machine and sit in an old, nostalgic tram in order to soak up the atmosphere of days gone by.

The Out to Sea exhibition on the history of sailing at the Hakasalmi Villa as well as the Women’s Rooms – Lives and Actions exhibition on the Finnish women's movement at Sederholm House are open all summer.

We look forward to seeing you at the City Museum!

Picture Paths is a new kind of photography exhibition that takes viewers through evolving streetscapes in Helsinki.

Helsinki City Museum's historical photographs show the city and its residents in the exact location where each photo was originally taken. The photos, attached to ordinary electrical cabinets, form a path through the history of six different city districts.

Picture Paths can be found in Katajanokka, on Runeberginkatu in Töölö, in Länsi-Pasila, in Malmi, on Helsinginkatu in Kallio and in western Herttoniemi.

Welcome to Picture Paths!

The Helsinki City Museum historical café is here again! This year, the pastries, cakes and biscuits served in the café have been chosen from the cookbooks of Anna Olsoni, the founder of home economics teaching in Finland. Café Olsoni is located in the oldest building in downtown Helsinki, Sederholm House.

Have coffee in the style of your grand-grandmother and try the delicious Lübeck Coffee Cake or Mam’s Spiced Cake, or even the politically charged Fennoman biscuit. In Café Olsoni you can also listen to live music from the turn of the 20^th century or visit the exhibition Women’s Rooms – Lives and Actions.

Café Olsoni
Sederholm House, Aleksanterinkatu 18
4th–12th June 2011
11a.m.–6p.m.
FREE ENTRY

Having Coffee with Anna Olsoni

Drinking coffee became a daily custom in Finland during the 1800s, also among the common people. Serving wheat buns and sugar became more common as the standard of living improved toward the end of the century. The higher classes expected a wide selection of treats to complement their coffee sessions, and the bun was introduced to common people as well. Whilst home-made pastries were held in high regard, confectioners' delicacies were mainly reserved to the wealthy city residents.

Anna Olsoni's first cookery book from 1892 taught people to prepare everyday, healthy and affordable food and offered only a few recipes for pastries. The sequel, published in 1901, included a wealth of recipes for cakes and biscuits previously enjoyed only by the gentlefolk. With her second book, Anna Olsoni uncovered the secrets of fine coffee treats to the masses, making them a part of the traditional Finnish coffee drinking customs.

Olsoni adjusted her recipes to contemporary preferences and the conditions in Finland. The use of spices was gentle, as excessive seasoning was seen as unhealthy. Fruits and berries were used mainly for jams, as the Finnish season for fresh ingredients was quite short.

Olsoni’s recipes combine the old with the new.  The concise recipes make use of accurate measurements and apply the recently adopted metric system. Nevertheless, old traditions show here and there. Old measurements and methods are still visible in the more traditional recipes. The ingredients may surprise today, as eggs used to be smaller and some spices and leavening agents were different, for example. Due to the wood stoves used in Olsoni’s time, the stated cooking temperatures and times are vague at best. Today’s bakers will have to scratch their heads for a while before they can prepare treats à la Anna Olsoni!

Anna Olsoni-Quist (1864–1943)
Founder of Home Economics instruction in Finland

In the 19th century, family and home came to be regarded as the core of society, on which rested the flourishing of the entire nation. Women's work as home keepers developed into an honourable mission requiring skills and knowledge, and household management was raised to a new level, assisted by science. In Great Britain and US, chemistry-based home economics was developed and began to be taught in schools.

In 1890, The Association of Women in Finland sent Anna Olsoni, a daughter of a vicar and well-versed in home keeping, to study home economics instruction in Stockholm, London and Edinburgh, and to pursue a degree in home economics teaching in Glasgow. Upon her return in 1891, the Helsinki Pedagogical School of Cooking was founded and she was appointed director. 

In 1892, Olsoni wrote the first textbook for home economics in Finland. The comprehensive book covered the basics of chemistry, nutrition, handling foodstuffs, cleaning, and clothes maintenance. Olsoni presented in precise modern measurements recipes for basic dishes, emphasizing healthiness as well as saving time and money. In 1901 Olsoni published a sequel, which also included recipes for more sophisticated dishes. Both cookbooks remained popular for years.

When she married in 1894, Anna Olsoni left her position and moved to Vyborg. The mother of seven taught home economics and worked as the first food reporter in Finland. She was also active in the Martha movement, in the Soldiers’ Home Organisation, and in the political party Young Finns. Olsoni represented the party as the first woman on the city council of Vyborg from 1920 to 1928.

Chamber music

In Café Olsoni, young musicians from the Degree Programme in Music at the Metropolia University of Applied Sciences and the Sibelius Academy will perform chamber music that was popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Concerts daily at 12 a.m., 2 p.m. and 4 p.m.

Coffee in Women’s Rooms

A coffee break at Café Olsoni can be combined with a visit in the centennial exhibition of the National Council of Women of Finland. “Women's Rooms – Lives and Actions” presents Finnish women’s organisations and a century of their hard work for equality, a room of their own and a rightful place in the society. Many bold and innovative Finnish women and their accomplishments are presented in the Sederholm House, built in 1757, which is the oldest building in downtown Helsinki.

The Helsinki City Museum will open an exhibition titled “Out to Sea – 150 Years of Sailing in Helsinki ” at the Hakasalmi Villa, next door to Finlandia Hall, on 27 May 2011. 

The exhibition will look at the maritime past of Helsinki from the perspective of yachting as a pastime. Besides boats, yacht clubs, sailors and boat races, the endangered underwater nature of the Baltic Sea, whose cleanliness sailors are working to improve, will be an important topic. The exhibition will also feature the origin of the Finnish blue cross flag, first used by a yacht club.

Yachting became more popular on the coasts of Finland in the mid-1800s alongside with practical seafaring related to fishing, trade and traffic. As elsewhere in Europe, sailing enthusiasts started yacht clubs that have, from the very beginning, promoted seafaring skills, pressed for improvements in the preconditions for sailing and organised sailing competitions. Yachting expanded widely in the society, crossing class and language barriers, and as early as the end of the 1800s, working class sailing clubs were established.

“Out to Sea” will explore yachting from many viewpoints. A central role is naturally played by yachts themselves, which will be presented through drawings, scale models and half hull models as well as photographs. The exhibition will feature famous sailors, boat races and Helsinki-based yacht clubs, among which the main role will be played by the city’s oldest yacht club, Nyländska Jaktklubben, which is celebrating its 150^th anniversary. NJK will bring a wide array of objects previously unseen by the general public, such as trophies, to Hakasalmi Villa.

The pictures in the exhibition will show sailing fashion trends and the architecture of the elegant yacht club pavilions. The international community and culture of sailors will become familiar even to landlubbers, who will get the chance to try how it feels to sit in a dinghy and how to navigate at sea.

The exhibition will include a glance at maritime Helsinki, life in the Archipelago as well as the Baltic Sea, seen above water, when gliding on the waves, and beneath the surface. Old photographs and works of art will tell about the fishermen and the life in villas in Helsinki. Besides photographs, you will get to know more about the local underwater environment through aquariums. Today’s sailors are worried about the deterioration of the Baltic Sea, whose prevention will be presented in the exhibition.

The exhibition partners of the City Museum include Helsinki yacht clubs, the Finnish Meteorological Institute and the John Nurminen Foundation. The Museum has prepared the exhibition by, among other things, documenting the sailing culture in Helsinki with the help of maritime history students of the University of Helsinki as well as by photographing the activities, boats and buildings of yacht clubs.

Out to Sea
150 Years of Sailing in Helsinki
Hakasalmi Villa, Mannerheimintie 13d, tel. (09) 3107 8519.

Open 27 May 2011–8 January 2012 
Wed–Sun 11 am – 5 pm, Thu 11 am – 7 pm. 
FREE ENTRY.

Come and celebrate the 
100-year-old City Museum!

This year, Helsinki City Museum will reach the age of 100 years. To celebrate, the museum will have a party on and around Senate Square on Sunday 15 May 2011 from noon till 4pm.

There will be history for every taste: historical outfits and dances from years gone by, classic automobiles, a 1700^th century shop, clowns and giants. The Kengurumeiniki band will play for children, and after that a big ball will be held on Senate Square. 

The public is invited to dress up in the styles of the past and join the old-time street life. Admission is free, as it is to all City Museum exhibitions and events.

Senate Square
12 pm  Opening parade & opening speech
– Deputy Lord Mayor Tuula Haatainen
12.40   Two clowns and a door
1 pm    Children’s concert by Kengurumeininki
2 pm    Two clowns and a door
2.45     Ballroom dancing outdoors, accompanied by the Sininen huvimaja band

Historical car show in cooperation with Mobilia Museum

Helsinki City Hall, Banquet Room
A Dance Through the History of Helsinki
the dance potpourri begins at 12.30 and 2 pm
Renaissance and Baroque Dances   
– La Porte du Temps
Dances from the 18^th century   
– Menuett Akademien (Sweden)
Dances from the 19^th century   
– Seurasaaren Kansantanssijat
Dances from the 1910–20s   
– Seurasaaren Kansantanssijat & Sakilaiset Orchestra

Sofiankatu
12.40   Helsinki Police Street Band
13.50   Helsinki Police Street Band
Giants from Dance Theatre Hurjaruuth

Sederholm House
open 11 am – 5 pm
18^th century style shopping
Exhibition Women's Rooms – Lives and Actions

Sofiankatu 4
open 11 am – 5 pm
Films about springtime Helsinki at Kino Engel
Exhibition Helsinki Horizons

Helsinki City Museum is seeking a newly designed everyday object through an open design competition. The object will be sold at the museum’s shop. The competition is open through June 15, 2011.

The object should be related to Helsinki’s history but represent contemporary design. As such it should be linked to Helsinki’s past and present. It should be suitable for the museum shop’s product range. It should be aesthetically of high quality, usable in everyday situations, and suitable for mass production. 

The object will be available at the shop by the opening of the Made in Helsinki 1700-2012 exhibition, which will open at the Hakasalmi Villa City Museum branch on June 12, 2012.  

The competition will be open to individuals and teams. The proposals should present the design concept, the materials used, and the intended application. The proposals can be submitted as conceptual drawings in scale. They should include a written description no longer than one A4 sized page.

The chair of the competition jury is Tiina Merisalo, Director of Helsinki City Museum, and the other jury members are Kari Korkman, Director, Helsinki Design Week, and Minna Sarantola-Weiss, Research Manager, City Museum. The winner is announced at the Helsinki Book Fair on Friday, October 28, 2011. The prize is €1,500.

Made in Helsinki 1700-2012 will present the historical origins of Helsinki handicraft and design. The exhibition will celebrate Helsinki’s World Design Capital year and Helsinki’s bicentennial, which coincide in 2012. The exhibits will display skillfully crafted works by artisans and everyday industrial products from the last 300 years. The City Museum wants the new product to fit into this tradition.

Entries to the competition should be addressed to Päivi Makkonen, Helsinki City Museum, Sofiankatu 4, P.O. Box 4300, FI-00099 City of Helsinki, Finland, delivered no later than 16:00 (4 PM) on June 15, 2011. Entries can also be emailed to Päivi Makkonen at paivi.makkonen@hel.fi (maximum message size is 2 MB). The entries should include the designer’s full contact information.

For further information, contact Päivi Makkonen by email.

Helsinki City Museum has published some material on the Internet to serve as a source of inspiration for the designers (the accompanying text is in Finnish). The pictures included come from the museum’s collections.

The National Council of Women of Finland celebrates its 100th anniversary with the exhibition “Women’s Rooms – Lives and Actions”, which tells the story of gender equality in Finland. It shows the decades of hard work by women’s organisations to provide Finnish women with a room of their own, a rightful place in society. Completed in 1757, the Sederholm House is the oldest building in Helsinki city centre. Its atmospheric rooms now present both well-known and forgotten women and their courageous actions to improve the position of women.

In the late 19^th century, Finnish women started to get organised, establishing associations aiming at the improvement of women’s circumstances and rights in various areas of life and society. The persistent work of women’s organisations soon began to bear fruit. In 1906, Finnish women became the first in Europe to be granted the right to vote and stand for election. In the first decades of independence, women became free of their husbands’ control, improved their education and advanced their careers. The welfare of mothers and children was supported through a number of reforms.

Gender equality progressed quickly in the decades after the war, particularly from the 1970s onwards. Women’s opportunities to work were increased by the improved availability of contraception and abortion as well as day care, and gradually all professions opened to women, including clergy and military positions. In families, traditional parental roles started to bend. Equality was reinforced by many laws, and in politics women advanced to the top of society.

In the 2010s, complete equality is still some distance away and the work of women’s organisations remains important. Internationalisation brings new challenges. Finnish women’s organisations are striving to help female immigrants as well as women in the developing countries towards equality.

The exhibition “Women’s Rooms – Lives and Actions” opens new angles to the different development phases of gender equality in Finland by presenting the work of women’s organisations and a number of women who toiled hard for their rights. The script of the exhibition was written by Maritta Pohls, historian and PhD. The ingenious exhibition architecture was created by Tarja Kunttunen. The exhibition is accompanied by a number of events produced by women’s organisations. More information is available on the website of the National Council of Women of Finland at www.naisjarjestot.fi. The hostess of the exhibition is the Helsinki City Museum, which is celebrating its hundredth anniversary this year just like the National Council of Women of Finland.
 

Pictures are available at www.hel2.fi/kaumuseo/lehdistokuvat/naisten_huoneet

Women’s Rooms – Lives and Actions
Helsinki City Museum, Sederholm House, Aleksanterinkatu 18, tel. (09) 3103 6529.
Open 9 March.– 28 August 2011 Wed–Sun 11 am – 5 pm, Thu 11 am – 7 pm.

FREE ENTRY

After Kari Hakli and Signe Brander, the Helsinki City Museum continues its series of highly popular photograph exhibitions in Villa Hakasalmi in October 2010 by introducing photographs of Helsinki in 1969–1979 by Simo and Eeva Rista. Having diligently recorded everyday life on the streets of their ever-changing home city, the vast production of the photographers offers a nostalgic journey to the 1970s in the Asphalt and Sunflowers exhibition in Villa Hakasalmi between 14 October 2010 and 27 February 2011. At the same time, a web exhibition and a photograph book carrying the same name are published with a wider photograph selection.

Specialising in architecture, photographer Simo Rista got in the 1960s bored with his heavy photograph equipment, got himself a lighter camera and directed it from the buildings of Helsinki to people and the bustle of the streets. For Simo Rista, recording the everyday life of city dwellers became a fun hobby which he then shared with photographer Eeva Rista, joining him on the photographic excursions in 1970. They always kept their cameras on them, and between the years 1969 and 1987, they took approximately 60,000 photographs of Helsinki. The photos were appended to the City Museum collections in 2008.

From the shadows of buildings as well as from streets and courtyards, Simo Rista and Eeva Rista found people’s Helsinki, which they shot on grass-root level. One of the most touching themes in their photos is the children’s world at a time when children were still allowed to play freely in the courtyards of the stone city and in suburban waste lands. A humane viewpoint is also distinctive in their news photography: in a festive monument unveiling ceremony, they pick children and elderly people, tired of the ceremony, as their objects.

The Ristas strived to depict the real Helsinki as honestly and bluntly as possible. Their aim was not to collect prizes at exhibitions but to use photography to fight for what was important to them. Their photos portray the contemporary ideologies and social phenomena that agitated people’s minds: demonstrations, traffic jams and fierce changes in the city. The frantic debate also led to positive results, for example, in the Helsinki city planning, which the Ristas helped with their photos.

The modern viewers will focus their attention on the nowadays lost phenomena that are present in Simo Rista’s and Eeva Rista’s photos: telephone booths, stone base shops, demolished buildings, mini-skirts and fashion from the olden days. On the other hand, one can recognise familiar characteristics of Helsinki: the stone building blocks in the city centre, wooded suburbs, the maritime climate with its fresh summer winds and slushy winters. The sincere joy of children has not changed in 40 years, either.

Audio guide, book and web exhibition

Over 150 photos are on display in Villa Hakasalmi. You can get deeper insight to many of them by lending an audio guide in Finnish and Swedish, consisting of the photographers’ memories from their photographic excursions. To continue the time travel to Helsinki in the 1970s, explore the by-products that expand the contents of the exhibition, such as the photograph book in Finnish and Swedish and the web exhibition in Finnish comprising almost 9,000 photos at www.asfalttiajaauringonkukkia.fi.

Asphalt and sunflowers
Simo Rista’s and Eeva Ristas’s photographs from Helsinki 1969-1979
Hakasalmi Villa, Mannerheimtie 13 D
tel. (09) 3107 8519.
Open 14.10.2010–27.2.2011 
Wed–Sun 11 am – 5 pm
Thu 11 am – 7 pm.
FREE ENTRY

Pictures are available at www.hel2.fi/kaumuseo/lehdistokuvat/asfalttia_ja_auringonkukkia

The new book Foto Signe Brander complements the popular exhibition in the Hakasalmi villa. The lively photos taken a century ago still fascinate the habitants of today’s Helsinki. The people play an important role in Brander’s photos. The photos show you the whole spectrum of life in Helsinki: work, everyday life, leisure and celebrations.

Helsinki City Museum, Sofiankatu 4, open until 10 pm
Exhibition: HELSINKI HORIZONS
at 7, 8 Helsinki songs by a female a cappella quartet.
and 9 pm

Sederholm House, Aleksanterinkatu 18, open until 10 pm
Exhibition: NIGHT
5–10 pm Helsinki after dark: historical bedrooms, night work and night life, frightening shadows and dream worlds.

Hakasalmi Villa, Mannerheimintie 13 D, open until 10 pm
Exhibition: FOTO SIGNE BRANDER
at 6 pm Hämäläis-Osakunnan Laulajat, conducted by Esko Kallio, performs romantic Finnish music for mixed choir.
5–10 pm Helsinki of the early 1900s seen by a female photographer,
guides available for answering your questions.

Tuomarinkylä Manor Museum, open until 9 pm
Exhibition: ELEGANCE
Children’s Museum, open until 8 pm
Exhibition: MAMMOTHS AND GUINEA-PIGS
5–8 pm Programme for the whole family in the yard: face painting, balloons, horse rides
7 pm Jytäjyrsijät band plays real rock for children in the yard
8 pm Katariina Saarikoski, cello, and Pauli Lamppu, guitar, give an intimate chamber concert in the manor house parlour.

F R E E    E N T R Y

The historical cafés hosted at the Sederholm House during the Helsinki Week have been wildly popular in previous summers. Consequently, Helsinki City Museum and Palmia Meeting and Banquet Services offer also this year a café event. This time, it is themed around Count Augustin Ehrensvärd (1710–1772), the founder of the Suomenlinna maritime fortress, who is celebrating his 300th anniversary. 

A variety of pastries from his youth are served in Café Ehrensvärd, based on 300-year-old recipes. They reveal forgotten taste combinations that are surprisingly fresh and original. Historically inspired pastries, the atmosphere of the oldest house in Helsinki and appropriate music take you from the coffee table to the past centuries.

Café Ehrensvärd offers a variety of typical pastries of the early 18th century, based on old Swedish cookery books. They tell which spices were in fashion then and open an exotic culinary world, interestingly different from our modern taste. You might not expect to find mace, cinnamon and currant in a meat pasty. Chervil, the herb with a subtle liquorice tinge, lends a unique taste to a hit pastry from the 18th century. Our ancient lemon pie has a very strong flavour, but in our gooseberry pie the tart taste of the berries is softened with almond. Ehrensvärd's favourite tree was the common hazel, which is why his celebratory tart packs the crunchy punch of hazelnuts flavoured with rosewater.

The recipes have been chosen and interpreted by Jere Jäppinen, a curator of the Helsinki City Museum. Chef Antti Mikkelä from Palmia has adapted them to a modern kitchen.

During the Helsinki Week June 7–13 2010 Café Ehrensvärd and the Sederholm House, Aleksanterinkatu 18, are open daily 11am–6pm. Young musicians from the Degree Programme in Music at the Metropolia University of Applied Sciences will perform daily chamber music that was popular in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Before or after you enjoy the delicacies of Café Ehrensvärd, take a look at the exhibition Night in the Sederholm House. It tells the story of the City of Helsinki in the dark moments of the night. The entry is free.

When coffee came to Finland

Coffee drinking, originally adopted from the Turks, became common among the higher-class folk of Western and Central Europe in the late 17th century. It was then that Europe saw the establishment of the first coffee houses, where men would converge to discuss politics. The fashionable new beverage soon made its way to Sweden, too, and it was not long before the gentlefolk in Stockholm, and to some extent in Turku and Helsinki as well, were smitten with the exotic drink. Coffee drinking spread gradually, but it was not until 1773 that the first coffee house in Helsinki, and presumably the entire Finland, was opened.

The new expensive and rare drink was originally enjoyed once a week as is, without any accompanying edibles. However, the contemporary cuisine included many sweet and savoury pastries, which were served at feasts alongside other dishes. Cookbooks published in the Swedish Empire in the 17th and 18th centuries included a wide variety of recipes for pasties, pies, biscuits, doughnuts and waffles. The preparation of fancy pastries naturally required special tools: doughnut and tart pans, biscuit moulds and waffle irons, which could also be found in the kitchens of wealthy Helsinkians as early as the turn of the 18th century.

Payments in cash only.

Further information
Helsinki City Museum: curator Jere Jäppinen, tel. (09) 3103 6505 or jere.jappinen(at)hel.fi