The man who lit up Finland: Unpacking the luminous legacy of Paavo Tynell's lamps

Paavo Tynell was fondly known as “the man who illuminated Finland”. He was born in Helsinki 12 years after the invention of the domestic lightbulb, at a time when Finland, like much of northern Europe, was still in the dark, but his work was soon lighting up spaces across the country. “Tynell came of age during Finland’s electrification,” says Marie Kristine Schmidt, Chief Brand Officer of Gubi, which reintroduced its first line of Tynell’s iconic designs in 2018, decades after his death in 1975. “It defined his career, and his early work in blacksmithing and metalwork naturally evolved into creating electric light fixtures. He was one of the first to understand the artistic potential of lighting in this new era.”

To this day, Taito Oy (named for the Finnish word for ‘skill’), the lighting company co-founded by Tynell in 1918, is responsible for the fixtures that illuminate some of Helsinki’s most iconic spaces. Step into Helsinki Central Station, for instance, and you’ll find Tynell’s grand chandeliers, their frosted glass shades framed by polished brass. At Meilahti Church, six asymmetric Taito Oy chandeliers inspired by the Crown of Thorns hang above the pews. “Whether it’s the railway station, a hotel, the university, or the churches, you see a piece of Tynell,” Schmidt notes. “It’s really spectacular that you have a designer who has such an important footprint on some of the most important institutions and public spaces in Helsinki.”

Born into a working-class family as the seventh of nine children, Tynell didn’t attend school beyond an elementary level because his parents simply couldn’t afford it. So, at 16, he went straight into an apprenticeship at G.M. Sohlberg’s metalsmith workshop. There, he spent six years as a sheet-metal worker before taking on another year’s training as a blacksmith at Koru Oy, a workshop specialising in electric light fixtures, where he created his first light fixture in brass – a material that would come to define his career. “Sometimes your career is shaped by the work you do in your early years,” says Schmidt. “For Tynell, his metalwork and blacksmithing were anchored around lighting, and that became his destiny.”

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