USES OF CURLY BIRCH FROM TOOLS AND IMPLEMETS
TO CORPORATE GIFTS

Markku Kosonen

Historically, curly birch was used in vernacular tools and implements, as shown by objects in local heritage museums. The tough and non-splitting structure of the wood was processed and refined in everyday conditions into functional items and products. Therefore, surviving artefacts, tools and home implements have stood the test of time and have gained the patina of years.

In the stocks of weapons, curly birch made its way from one land to another, telling of the culture of its bearers. In cudgels and chisel handles it survived blows and lasted for generations. In knife handles it served practical uses and sometimes heated tempers. In the kitchen, most of the wooden vessels and containers were of made of curly birch or burls before stave vessels were introduced. Skilled hands made scale weights, salt cellars, reelers, spool frames, candlesticks and sugar hammers out of curly birch. The decorative properties of curly birch were taken more rarely as starting points. It also provided material for walking sticks.
Owing to its resistance to splitting, curly birch was burnt in whole pieces in the large threshing shed ovens. This twisted “devil’s wood” burnt well and for long, like in the fires of hell. The extensive use of birch for firewood especially reduced the amount of available curly birch. During the period when birch was underrated, official silvicultural instructions did not favour curly birch. Local carpenters and joiners working with this material could find it in the firewood stores of the railways and similar facilities. It also made its way by rail from Karelia to Finnish pulp mills, where those who knew about curly birch would try to retrieve the logs before they went into the boilers. The idea was perhaps to make something of importance and beauty out of this material.
As industry met the demand for consumer goods, the importance of making things by hand declined. Factories produced cheaper and better vessels, containers and tools. Curly birch began to be used by cabinet-making firms and furniture factories. The skills and knowledge of material of ordinary people remained without practical applications, being channelled into decorative objects and as means of self-expression. The best examples of this area are the many sports prizes and trophies that were made by hand.
The last major demonstration of this type of craftsmanship was by Finnish soldiers at the eastern front during World War II. Curly birch could be found in the wilderness backwoods of Karelia and when the front remained in place for a long while there was also time to express memories, dreams and fears with this material that was often regarded as mystical. The result was “freehand expression” that began to approach the goals of design and visual art. Recently, this type of expression has come to be found in market places in the form of souvenirs. Among committed hunters and foresters a curly birch briefcase lives on as a symbol of identity, and this type of briefcase is one of the most popular curly-birch items given as corporate gifts.
Owing to the rarity and decorativeness of curly birch, courts and members of the elite became interested in it, and it gained more symbolic meanings. Particularly in Russia, it was greatly valued at the Imperial court and as gifts of state. Emperor Alexander I is known to have given Napoleon a set of curly birch furniture. For the Finns, curly birch appears to have been clearly associated with the symbols of national existence; this expression of power was to be taken into the Finns’ own use. Gustaf Mauritz Armfelt, a high-ranking Finnish nobleman in the Imperial court, brought a large set of curly birch furniture with him from Russia to his manor of Åminne near present-day Salo in Southwestern Finland. The collection consisted of several sofas and chairs, a billiard table, various card tables and a compass holder. Some of the items were made by Gustaf Nordström, the manor’s carpenter and cabinet-maker. In its section on furniture, The Dictionary of Art, printed in England, shows an early 19th-century secretaire-a-abattant, made from Karelian birch.
Around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, intellectuals in search of national identity sought inspiration in Karelia. Yrjö Blomstedt, Akseli Gallen-Kallela and Louis Sparre journeyed to the eastern wilderness regions to look for new themes to give Art Nouveau a Finnish appearance. Because the word “Karelia” appeared in the Latin botanical name of curly birch (Betula pendula var. carelica), it gained extra importance as a symbol of Finnishness and therefore it had to be brought “home”. The Finland pavilion at the Paris World’s Fair of 1900 and its Iris Room with curly-birch furniture by Gallen-Kallela and other art objects became a manifesto of national identity. In the 1930s, the new Parliament House in Helsinki, the capital of the young republic of Finland, was fitted with curly and flamy birch furniture alongside items made from foreign types of timber. The furniture of secretary-general’s office was designed by Pauli Blomstedt, and the legs of the large chairs in the Hall of State are of curly birch. The solid Speaker’s gavel has set an example for many organizations, and chairmen’s gavels are one of the most common symbolic uses for curly birch at present. Because of its twisting grain structure thin curly birch is unsuitable for making conductor’s batons.
The simple forms of functionalist, or International Style, furniture were enhanced with curly-birch veneer, like a refined version of the past national romantic style – to mark new language of form. Trade relations with St. Petersburg were broken off, but the concept of an upper-class lifestyle was reflected in the home interiors of a new affluent middle class. Russian emigrés passed on international influences. Being a visually prominent pattern, curly birch was – and still is – used only as a part of interiors, on small surfaces. The interiors of lifts, table tops, cupboard doors and the front parts of counters were often lined with curly birch. After the Finnish Civil War of 1918 there was a renaissance of curly birch furniture. Middle-class families obtained furniture in keeping with their position, which also called for new kinds of interiors. Drawing rooms, studies and salons were converted into living rooms that were furnished in accordance with their owner’s social status. Bedroom furniture in particular and even larger sets of items were popular among clients commissioning furniture. They were produced by well-known furniture-makers, such as the Mikko Nupponen plants in Vihti and Lahti, South Finland. Before the First World War, the Nupponen company was a partner in a company known as the Finnish Furniture Store on the Nevski Prospekt in St. Petersburg. Sets of furniture in curly birch were particularly popular in Russia. The Keravan puusepäntehdas firm and the Kutvonen carpentry firm in Kuopio also made sets of curly birch furniture.
After the Second World War curly birch was still rotary-cut into veneer at the Soinne factory in Helsinki’s Lauttasaari among other plants. The limited use of veneer and the development of rotary cutting brought an end to its manufacture on a large scale in Finland. The Mahogany company in Lohja has continued making curly birch veneer in small amounts. The veneer is mostly cut in Germany. Alvar Aalto accepted veneer for the finish of some of his chair designs, but Ilmari Tapiovaara, who helped direct the front-line soldiers’ crafts pastimes during the war, no longer wanted to see curly birch in wooden products of the industrial era. Tapio Wirkkala used curly birch in some of his tray designs, and in the 1970s the Stockmann department store used curly birch finish in its Kaira collection of cupboards and glass-walled cabinets designed by Klaus Michailik and made by the Keravan puusepäntehdas factory, which was owned by Stockmann. At the Marin Congress Center in Helsinki curly birch veneer was used in the walls and tables. During the 1990s designers and cabinet-makers collaborated in projects involving various types of wood, which reintroduced curly birch in the modernization of wooden materials. The new annex of Parliament House in Helsinki will have curly birch and other domestic types of timber representing the various provinces and regions of the members. Celebration the 70th anniversary of the so-called Aalto stool, the Artek firm had a numbered series made of it with a curly birch seat top.

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