Artek - Pauper Coin Collector, ceramic piggy bank

Artek Pauper Coin Collector.

A ceramic design by the Finnish-Korean design duo Company and is part of the Artek Secrets of Finland collection.

Pauper Coin Collector is an expressive ceramic piggy bank, designed by the Finnish Company for Artek. It was inspired by an old Finnish tradition of placing wooden pauper statues outside churches to raise money for the poor. According to Company, the Pauper is a reminder of the cold, dark polar night season that emphasizes the importance of helping each other.

The collection celebrates the 100th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Finland and Japan. When designing the objects, Company considered what kind of gifts the Finnish delegation could have taken with Japan a hundred years ago. Each of the handcrafted, charmingly naive objects celebrates one seasonal ritual of the Finnish calendar.

Width: 10 cm. Depth: 10 cm. Height: 16,5 cm.

Organic Company:

Company is a Helsinki-based design agency founded in 2000 by Aamu Song (1974) and Johan Ollin (1974), both graduates of the University of Arts. The Finnish-Korean duo has their own shop Salakauppa ("secret shop") in Helsinki, and one of their most famous projects is called Secrets - in the project, Song and Ollin travel the world in search of traditional production methods and the creation of new designs on basis thereof.

Company's work is displayed in permanent collections of museums such as the Design Museum Finland and the Icelandic Design Museum. In 2010, Song and Ollin received the Finnish State Award for Design.