JYVASKYLA.- Hat, postcard, and other items of material evidence is an exhibition telling stories about the objects acquired by the Alvar Aalto Museum or donated to it in recent years. These stories are given extra punch by material selected from the Drawing, Photographic and Document Archives.

On show are documents linked with the personal history of the architect Alvar Aalto, plus furniture, light fittings, building components and models of buildings designed by Aino and Alvar Aalto. The cavalcade of objects is supplemented with photographs and drawings which knit together tales of how each of the items developed – how each of the objects was conceived, how each has been used, and what stages it has gone through on its journey.

One of the exhibits taken from the collection is a sofa suite that belonged to a family from the town of Rauma on the west coast of Finland. On display, too, are lesser-known, one-off items of furniture, such as a rattan serving trolley, a prototype chair that never went into production, and a sofa with a seat pressed to shape from plywood. Furniture components derived from lengthy product development also have a place in the exhibition, for example, different versions of straight legs for tables. It was typical of Alvar Aalto’s work that design extended right down to the details of buildings. Examples of this on show in the exhibition are door handles and ceramic tiles that were used for internal and external wall cladding and for cladding columns.

Aino and Alvar Aalto’s wedding and their subsequent honeymoon forms a story of its own in the exhibition. Objects associated with Alvar’s clothing and sporting pursuits tell us more about the architect’s personal history.

The collections of objects at the Museum are the most extensive of their type in the world and the drawings collection is unique. The Museum’s collections of photographs and documents are treasure chests of information from which almost nothing is missing. This exhibition brings out some of these treasures for the public to see.

The visual appearance of the exhibition has been designed by the interior designer Professor Simo Heikkilä.