student life – Object of the Month – Helsinki University Museum Flame

29th June 202214th July 2022

The colourful tradition of student caps in Estonia

In honour of the 390th anniversary of the University of Tartu on 30 June 2022, our object of the month is the cap of the first Estonian student organisation. We are also presenting a student cap from the Soviet era and the Estonian cap tradition more broadly.

The collections of the Helsinki University Museum include a cap that originally belonged to a student who had gone on an exchange to Estonia in the 1930s. A cap embroidered with a white star and made of blue felt fabric, with a black-and-white band round the edge and a black peak. Photo: Mai Joutselainen, Helsinki University Museum.

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25th November 202122nd December 2021

The Domus chair conquered the world

The object of the month in November is a Finnish design classic: a chair which is a familiar object to many Finns from a variety of spaces. The story of the Domus chair began during the housing shortage that followed the Second World War, although it is possible that the idea for the chair occurred to its designer, Ilmari Tapiovaara, as early as the 1930s. In any case, the bent plywood chair, originally designed for a student housing complex in Helsinki, gradually became a mass-produced international bestseller. The Helsinki University Museum has received items of Domus furniture designed by Tapiovaara as donations from the University of Helsinki’s Student Union.

A wooden chair with a curved backrest and short armrests. — An original chair from the Domus Academica building complex, now included in the collections of the Helsinki University Museum. Photo: Helsinki University Museum / Maria Tukia.

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