Exhibition: Rajat

The exhibition year 2025 will be opened by the Rajat sales exhibition, which offers a unique overview of Finnish metal design and works of blacksmiths. The exhibition features works by seven renowned contemporary blacksmiths who challenge traditional notions of blacksmiths profession and design.

Profession of blacksmith is one of Finland’s oldest crafts. It has undergone a huge transformation. Historically, the blacksmith was a vital craftsman in his community, but today profession is a rare and artistically renewed. Today there are an estimated 50 fulltime blacksmiths in Finland, and the tradition is at its strongest in contemporary artistic and aesthetic expression.

The Rajat exhibition highlights this transition and explores the boundaries between art and craft, design and utilitarian objects. The works range from forged carbon steel to sculptures, jewellery and utility article. They arencombining the organic aesthetics of natural forms with the clean lines of modernism. Inspired by ancient mysticism and beauty of the North, among other things.

The exhibition’s blacksmiths and artists – Antti Nieminen, Antti Kuikka, Kirsi Vahtera, Sami Ryhänen, Janne Peltokangas, Kimmo Tulimetsä and Eero Hanhikoski – highlight the diversity and importance of blacksmiths profession in today’s culture. Their work shows how metal design can be both deeply rooted in tradition and uncompromisingly modern.

The opening of the Rajat exhibition will be celebrated on Friday, 24 January, at 5 pm to 7 pm. The exhibition will be open to the public at the Design Center Proto from 25 January to 12 April during the opening hours of the center. Welcome to experience the new dimensions of metal design!