Taisto Kaasinen

Taisto Kaasinen (1918–1980) was one of Finland’s leading ceramic artists in the 20th century.

He was the son of Viljam Kaasinen and from 1941 married to Airi Lija Valtonen. Kaasinen first studied art on his own and then privately for Erkki Koponen and Uuno Eskola . He was trained as a ceramicist at the Arabia factory 1946-1952 and was employed as a ceramic artist at Upsala-Ekeby in 1952. He returned to Arabia in 1961 where he has his own studio in the art department. He participated in the exhibition Artium Exposé in Gothenburg in 1953 and in several exhibitions in Uppsala.

He was part of the Nordic tradition aiming for warm-hearted, humorous, and sometimes subtly ironic design.

My favourite piece is this cat, such a great character.

He became a prominent designer of animal and people figurines with rounded shapes and kind expressions.

Taisto’s artistry is represented at the numerous museums in the Nordic countries.

He even depicted Knights of Old and Knights of Bold !

Also using flat ceramic-relief artforms as well as more 3D sculptures.

‘People’ (the name of the sculpture above), is located on the Hermanni Parish Hall in Helsinki and was made by Taisto in 1967. It depicts five people of different ages, holding each other by the hand to form a chain which symbolizes unity within the parish and involvement in the different stages of people’s lives.

I love his range of 2-D and 3-D friendly ceramic pieces.

Beautiful Nordic Ceramics. If you enjoyed this, check out the work of Mari Simmulson, Stig Lindberg and Lisa Larson.