With family Balbueno in Izucar de Matamoros.
The Tree of Life sculptures were the first items that got us hooked on Mexico. These figurative statuettes were used by Catholic missionaries to tell about the Bible. Soon the imagery started to mix with local beliefs and developed into its own art form. This colourful mixing of different worlds keeps amazing us. The family Balbuena Alonso – father, mother and their son – has been making tree of life ceramics for over 40 years. They use clay from the area which they first collect, then filter, ferment and knead. Forming the statuettes is done by hands only. After shape is ready the statuettes are fired and painted in brilliant colours.




Aamu with Master Rufina Balbuena.




Marching to Heaven / Marchando al Cielo
Photo Paavo Lehtonen




The Ideal Home / Casa Ideal
Photo Paavo Lehtonen




Tree of Friends / Árbol de amigos
Photo Paavo Lehtonen




Marching to Heaven
Drawing Aamu Song / COMPANY




Cara Grande
Photo Paavo Lehtonen




Cara pequena
Photo Paavo Lehtonen




Cara muy pequena
Photo Paavo Lehtonen





Cara Grande, Cara pequena and Cara muy pequena candle holders.
Drawign Aamu Song / COMPANY




Aamu and the first unpainted samples.




In Good Company in Oaxaca.
In an old book in an old bookstore in Oaxaca we find an article about Hojalata masters Alfonso Santiago Leyva and Victor Hernandez, famous masters who brought hojalata making to Oaxaca. We learn that a hojateria with the same name is still active in northern Oaxaca. One late evening we find Alfonso’s son Tomas Ricardo working at his workshop with his wife, sister and two assistants. Tomas Ricardo is really skilfull in especially three dimensional items like boxes, toys, figurines and ferris wheels. Inspired by these we design a set of small houses, a bus with passengers and an ice-cream kiosk.




Tomas with his wife Matilde working on our new project ’Casas Mexicanas’.
Casas Mexicanas is a set of four nesting containers in the shape of houses found around Oaxaca.
Inside the big government house sits a typical Oaxacan city house and inside that a town house that houses a tiny family home.




Casas Mexicanas
Photo Paavo Lehtonen




Casas Mexicanas
Drawing Johan Olin / COMPANY




Autobus con Pasajeros
Photo Paavo Lehtonen




Ice-Cream Kiosk / Quisco Helados
Photo Paavo Lehtonen




Meeting idols. Aamu with Master Quirino Santiago.

Here's a short story we'd like to share. It takes place in San Felipe Tejalapam in the state of Oaxaca.

For quite some time we've been fans of an old carpenter who creates the most amazing wooden animal figurines. However we have no idea how to get in contact with him, except of a really vague address in an really old book about Mexican crafts.
We ask our hotel in Oaxaca for advise on how to reach this rural destination some 50 km north.
Hotel recommends to take a taxi to a village close to the address and to try asking around oncewe get there. With this no-plan we set of.

We meet our driver and show him the name of the master. Si, si, says he and adds that he knows this man and his brother too. We are pretty sceptical about this whole journey. Our driver starts asking us where we’re from, what we do and why we want to visit this man. With our vocabulary of some twenty words of Spanish we manage to tell something about us and start becoming friendly with Ramiro (this turns out to be his name). Suddenly Ramiro tells it’s his grandfather we are going to meet! Insane. Or loco I guess is more proper word for this unlikely incident.

In the photo above is Martin Santiago Cruz, elder brother of master Quirino and his grandsons Jaime on left and our Ramiro on right.
In front of Martin is his work bench. Martin and Quirino use soft, female Copal wood for their scuptures and the hard, male copal for the work bench. That bench is sixty years old.




Meet Master Quirino at work. He shapes the rough form with a machete and then moves to smaller knives as the detailing gets smaller. On left is Margarita, Quirino's partner, who is painting the animals with him.




Nino & Nina. We wanted to see how master Quiiono would sculpt human characters (he always sculpts animals) and designed a this boy and girl based on Quirinos style.
Photo Paavo Lehtonen




Humananimal. With Martin we also wanted to see how he'd sculpt a human figurine but decided to just do half human, half animal.
Photo Paavo Lehtonen




Tree of Alebrije / Arbol de Alebrije
Martin's granson Jaime introduced us to his father, Martin's son, also Jaime who is a fantastically skilled sculptor. We designed this tree that follows shapes found from nature with the idea of using all parts, including the branches, of the now scarce copal tree.
Photo Paavo Lehtonen



Drawing Johan Olin / COMPANY




San Miguel de Allende.
Aamu and Master don Pedro with Papel Mache molds for our new collection of balloons and dolls.




Balloons / Globos
Photo Paavo Lehtonen




Nina, Nino & Perro from that world
Photo Paavo Lehtonen




Perro, Nina & Nino from this world
Photo Paavo Lehtonen







Nina, Nino & Perro.
Drawing Aamu Song / COMPANY




With family Reynoso in Huixcolotla, Puebla.
Juan Carlos (on left) and Roberto (on right) punch stacks of 50 papers to create intricate patterns while their father (in the middle) sews the punched papers on strings. Together with the family Reynoso we created a special set of papel picado flags for our exhibition Secret Universe at Designmuseum in Helsinki Finland.




Papel Picados fill the ceiling at SECRET UNIVERSE exhibition at Designmuseum Helsinki.




SECRET UNIVERSE at Designmuseum 5.4.-22.9.2019.Photo by Paavo Lehtonen.




The project was made possible with the support by The Finnish Cultural Foundation. Photo by Paavo Lehtonen.




Thank you all new dear friends, the amazing craftsmen and -women of Mexico. Gracias! Photo by Paavo Lehtonen.