International collections

The old foreign materials derived from the collections of the State Home Industry Museum have been complemented by more recent international items. In both cases, some of the objects are donations from travellers interested in preserving cultural heritage. Some of these contributions also include archival and photographic material that complement the objects themselves. 

Contributors to these collections include, among others, Eero Sovelius-Sovio, Tyyne-Kerttu Virkki, Irmeli Suviola, Pentti and Irma Johansson as well as Maija-Liisa Hirvi. These souvenir collections comprise handicrafts created as souvenirs for tourists and as a business from all around the world, all dated after 1945 and principally between the 1970s and the 1990s.
Furthermore, a small part of the international collection is made up of donations from exhibition partners. 

The Eero Sovelius-Sovio collection includes materials gathered by him over the 1980s and 1990s in the course of his travels in Latin America, Africa, South Asia, and Southern Europe. The Mexican collection is made up of ceramics items, masks, and textiles from Native American cultures. The African collection includes Makonde sculptures, Maasai jewelry, weapons, and textiles, while the South Asian collection is mainly made up of textiles. This donation also includes literature and archive materials.

The Craft Museum’s Tyyne-Kerttu Virkki collection includes materials originating from the formerly Finnish Karelian territories as well as Aunus in Eastern Karelia, along with items from Estonia, Cyprus, and Mexico. These collections include materials from the early 20th century to the present, with the preponderance of objects originating from the World War II era and the age of reconstruction that followed.  

The Indonesian handicrafts collection donated by Irmeli Suviola mainly dates from the 1990s and the 2000s and includes, among other objects, fabrics and basketwork items. 

The Pentti and Irma Johansson collection, bequeathed to the museum by the Jyväskylä couple in 2021, is made up of arts and crafts items imported to Finland from their travels of Asia. The collection’s hundreds of objects include e.g. Indian textiles, Chinese and Indian wood- and metalwork objects, cloisonné tableware, Tibetan Buddhist thangka paintings, Chinese porcelain ware, as well as copper vessels and carpets from India and the Middle East. Only a minority of the collection, about 300 objects, will be subsumed into the museum’s international collections. 

The collection of Museum director Maija-Liisa Hirvi comprises craft items made as souvenirs collected in the course of her professional and leisure travels all over the world. The collection has about 100 to 150 objects from Estonia, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Hungary, various parts of Russia, Latvia, Poland, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Belarus, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Taiwan, China, Bangladesh, Jerusalem, Vietnam, and Brazil.