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Arabia
For over 130 years now, Arabia has made real the thoughts of unique artists. This has brought forth a wide variety of award-winning ceramics, their originality and beauty often inspired by Nordic nature. Arabia's strength has been to turn unique ideas into classics.
Arabia is a trailblazer in modern Finnish design. Its product selection consists of popular ranges of dishes and design gift products.
The highly valued Arabia products are characterized by a timeless beauty as well as high quality and functionality. Arabia dishes, made to be used and displayed, hold a central position in Finnish lives: thanks to their innovative and distinctive design, they are equally at home on the kitchen table and at festive occasions. These are items designed for Finns who value the concept of Finnish design and recognize the aesthetic value of the products.
For over 130 years, Arabia has provided an expression of the era; not just distinctive design but a genuinely consumer-led approach have been its strengths. Arabia is consistently at the top of the list of the most esteemed brands in Finland, sharing the top slot with the Fazerin Sininen chocolates in 2006, the second time it has reached Number One (Source: marketing and advertising paper Markkinointi & Mainonta and market re-search company Taloustutkimus Oy, 2006). This is proof of the brand’s ability to reinvent itself and of the high regard in which it is held by Finns.
Designers
Behind the timeless and multifunctional Arabia products are many talented designers. Part of them belongs to the Arabia Art Department Society which was established in year 2003. The society maintains and nurtures the cultural heritage of the Art Department, which was established in the 1930s in the Arabia factory in Helsinki.
Production
The material of all Arabia tableware is vitreous china. Hard fired and dense vitro porcelain is a very durable material for daily use. Previously Arabia has produced also earthenware, feldspathic porcelain, stoneware and bone china.
Shaping the dish
Plates and platters from Arabia
A dry and granular body - a granulate - is used in dry pressing. The granulate is fed into the mould, where the dish is given its shape under high pressure.
Cups and bowls, saucers and plates from Arabia
A plastic body is used in moulding. A measured amount of the plastic body is placed in the mould itself (cups and bowls) or on top of it (saucers and plates), and then it is moulded mechanically.
Cup handles, jugs and vases fom Arabia
A liquid body is used when casting. The liquid body is placed in the plaster mould. Pressure casting is the lastest method used: the object is cast in a porous mould under pressure.
Finishing and glazing
Decorations and glazing give the finishing touch. Cups and plates from Arabia are glazed by mechanically spraying the glaze on to the surface of the dish. Other objects are glazed by dipping them into glaze by hand. All the glazes used by Arabia are lead-free, making them environmentally friendly and safe to use.
Some decorations are painted on the objects before glazing, as are the decorations on Ulla Procopé's Valencia tableware. Our latest method is to use a pad printing machine, which enables us to print pictures on to the surfaces of plates and platters. The process is automated and uses silicone pads for printing. Transfer decoration is most often performed on glazed and fired surfaces, i.e. on glostware.
Firing
A one-time firing suffices for undecorated products and for products with underglaze decorations. The firing takes 20 hours, and the temperature is 1260 °C.
Products that have been decorated with transfers go through a decoration firing at either 1200 °C or 890 °C. The decoration sinks into the glaze when firing at the higher temperature. All items fired at 1200 °C or more are dishwasher safe.
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| [iittala, Arabia, Marimekko] |
Born in Helsinki, Finland, in 1943. Heikki Orvola is one of the driving forces within Finnish design. He works in glass, ceramics, cast iron and textiles for iittala, Arabia and Marimekko. Orvola has worked for the industrial art business, but he has also worked in a variety of different materials as a form of pure, artistic expression. During his career as a designer, Heikki Orvola has received awards and prizes, including the Kaj Franck prize in 1998 – perhaps Finland’s most important design prize. For iittala he designd Kivi and Aika.
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| [Arabia] |
Professor Birger Kaipiainen (1915-88) was one of Finland’s best-known ceramic artists. He spent most of his 50-year career creating unique art ceramics in Arabia’s art department.
Kaipiainen’s colour-saturated, lush yet refined art inspired his contemporaries to call him "the prince of ceramics" and "the king of decorators". Kaipiainen received the honorary title of Professor in 1977.
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| [Arabia] |
Nathalie Lahdenmäki (b. 1974) graduated with an M.A. in art from the Department of Ceramics and Glass of the University of Art and Design Helsinki UIAH. She is both a Finnish and French national. She works as a researcher and teacher at her Alma Mater. She was awarded the Design Plus prize for her Fire series in Germany in 2002.
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| [iittala, Marset, Arabia, Marimekko] |
Harri Koskinen. Born in Karstula, Finland, in 1970. His furniture and versatile design objects have aroused great international interest. Harri Koskinen strives to find solutions that are innovative for both the consumer and producer. He works with companies like Artek, Danese, Finlandia Vodka Worldwide, Issey Miyake, Montina, Muji, Genelec, O luce, Panasonic, Seiko Instruments, Venini and Woodnotes. Along the years, he has won several awards. The most significant of them was Compasso d’Oro Award in 2004.
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