Stages of the Art of Annikki Part 2

In this blog entry I want to show you what Annikki did with house interiors.

Our small semi-detached house in Shawbury, Shrewsbury, Shropshire! 1967

My first lesson came when our first daughter was born in Shawbury, England. We had a small company semi-detached house with two bedrooms and a small study upstsirs with the living room, kitchen and dining room on the ground floor.

There was no central heating but we had a coal fireplace in the living room. We had a paraffin heater in the entrance hall and an electric bar heater in the dining toom. The upstairs was quite cold as the only the heat that permeated upstairs was available for us.. 

When Annikki was admitted to hospital for the birth of our first daughter, Susanna, I discussed with a couple of my colleagues and we all thought Annikki would be more comfortable if we moved the bedroom downstairs as the living room was always warm with a raging coal fire.. 

So three of us moved all the bedroom furniture of bed and cupboards down the narrow winding staircase down the living room and took all the living room furniture upstairs including the large television. A job well done by three people!

After 7 days I brought Annikki home from hospital.  I showed her our handiwork but she said absolutely nothing.

The next day I returned in the mornimg to my work and came home  at 5 in the evening.

I got a shock of  my life as this little lady had, by herself, reversed all the work we has done! 

I did not question her as this was her home, but it was my first experience of Finnish “sisu”.

I never again interfered in “her home” as the lesson was quite evident,

We moved to India in 1969 and we lived in a small flat in the city centre. Annikki was not happy.  

Three of our children in thded garden of our home in Madras.

I found a small independent house with a garden in the suburb of Madras. It was in the Defence Officer’s Colony at St. Thomas Mount.  This  house appeared on the market for rent. 

Annikki liked it and we took it on rent. It had just been constructed and the house had two bedrooms, a large study and a large living cum dining room room. Just ideal for the two of us and our two small children with a third one on the way. Annikki furnished it minimally and we lived there for a couple of years,

Then a good family friend told me that he had a property of about half and acre with a large two storey villa type house with three bedrooms, a large living room, a large dining room, an entrance toom, a pantry and an enormous kitchen, with  a verandah upstairs, a large. study room for the children, and a verandah at the entrance of the house. It also had a small covered car shed. The house also had a small outhouse for any live in home help.

 

Standing in the garden of our Velacheri villa in Madras. 

I took it immediately and Annikki got to work to furnish it.

She wanted a good living room set. Those on the market did not appeal to her. She designed her own to have it made. Rosewood and teak wood were expensive, 

I took her to a wood depot and she knew exactly what she wanted. 

White ceddar logs were lying there were really cheap as nobody could find use for it. Annikki got the logs sawn to exactly the sizes she wanted. Annikki then called a local carpenter and told him how she wanted the furniture to be made. No nails were used but using the wedge shaped locking design she designed all her furniture. 

The carpenter, an old man, was extremely good and made the three seater and a single seater sofa set. 

As MM Rubber was part of our family group, she got the foam cushions made to suit the correct size. They were just superb and became a talking point among our friends. 

All the other furniture was also designed by Annikki and they suited our needs.

They lasted the next 10 years we lived in India. When we left India we got the price almost three times it had cost us to make them.

Her choice of cushion covers, curtains and other furnishings  made use of the wonderful Indian textiles and the enormous range of colours and designs that were available.

The houses we occupied alway had her paintings to make them unique. Her creations as this one of handed painted fused light bulbs and aluminium foil was before the concept of recycling had even been thought of as an important international necessity!

She mastered the space concept be creating use for every square millimetre. Using even the exterior of a wall cupboard as valuable space.

She even recycled detergent boxes making them into file holders.

We also had a large collection of Indian antiques, but that is another storey which we will blog about later.

When we moved to Finland we had to leave most of the stuff behind but she brought whatever she thought were important for our new life in Finlsnd.

Our first home Finland was a small living cum dining room, an attic room  and another even smaller attic room with a  tiny kitchen. We were six, two adults and four children of ages 17, 26, 13 and 11. 

The photos above show how she used her skill as well as creating her own designs to make the home a place of sheer beauty.

Annikki was absolutely super in the way she organised that small 25 sq m space. There was adequate room for everyone.

Two children left for England within a year and the four of us were very comfortable for the next 9 years when our third daughter moved out. 

Then our son went to boarding school in Turku and we were just two and it was luxury.

When Annikki’s younger brother moved in, I decided we would move out. We found a lovely penthouse on Torikatu. Annikki did a masterful job setting up that home.

However, her father passed away and we had to move back to Annikki’s mother's home to look after her mother who had developed dementia. The house was remodelled by Annikki to suit  the situation. 

Annikki implemented many aspects making it suitable and an outstanding house to live in and look after her disabled mother. 

At the same time she did the house interior so beautifully that living there was like being in heaven. And I never saw her work as she was always doing something and I only saw it when she completed each task.

Her designs are worth talking anout.

She created an ordinary goldfish bowl into an art creation.

She took an ordinary fish tank and it became a piece of art.

The colours were self generated by sunlight coming through tghe window.

Her table top aquarium was a masterpiece as it became our cat’s tv. She would sit on it or lie on it to see the tasty gold fish swimming under the plastic cover.

She converted an outdoor flower stand into an unusual and excellent aquarium.

When her mother passed away in 2008, our daughter, Joanna, had moved  to England to study medicine. We moved into her house. Annikki worked wonders in that house but she was not happy in this borrowed home.

By good fortune we found a house on Sarkkatie. It was just right for her. 

The photos above show a small portion of her creativity. For instance, the antlers are not antlers but a branch from a tree fashioned as antlers!

We lived there for 10 years and it became the personal museum of Annikki. It showcased her interior design competence. Everything she did was artistic!

Unfortunately, my heart failure and amputation of my foot meant we had to move to an apartment as neither of us were able to maintain a large house and garden.

I am no interior designer and just tried to make everything practical for me as an invalid in a wheelchair to manage a apartment also and Annikki who had developed dementia.

I sadly miss Annikki’s special skills as an interior designer which I had thoroughly enjoyed throughout our married life! 

It is only now I discovered the enormous talent Annikki possessed as everything in our homes was always just perfect. 

She was prepared for every eventuality that everything was taken by me as granted. She was never stressed. 

Only now I realise how much she had worked to get the homes right for all of us.

I am not even close to being an interior design. 

What I have shown you here just a few examples of Annikki's capabilities. 

In my next blog of this series I will show you that beside interior design she was so competent as a garden designer. She created four of our gardens so beautifully that every single day I miss that skill of Annikki.

Flea Markets. (Kirpputori)

Annikki’s best hobby as an artist was to visit the flea markets (Kirpputori)  in Oulu. 

In the 1980s this was frowned upon by Finns who thought it below their dignity to buy second hand stuff.

Only when the severe long recession hit Finland in the late 1980s and early 1990s did the flea market culture become accepted as the Finns suffered greatly and had less money in their pockets. A popukar TV discussion program was featured at one time in a flea market 

There are six different types of flea markets. 

The first are the “antique” shops which sold high priced secondhand stuff which they called as antiques. Annikki did get some really non-Finnish good items from them. 

The second flea market type are the public auctions which were held regularly at a couple of places in Oulu. We used to bid for foreign items as Tiffany lamps and fabulous Italian glassware. We had nobody bidding against us as the Finns were busy buying Finnish “antiques”.

Tiffany dragonfly lamp we bought for €10 (now €240) from an Oulu Auction. This item is featured in the book about Tiffany glass!

Recently I sold a beautiful large Italian green glass ”goblet” we bought for €10 for €300 on Annikki’s Etsy page "Collectbles by Annikki" (not a misspelling!).

The third type of flea markets are those run by charitable organisations as the Red Cross (Kontti), the Pentecostal church and the Salvation Army. I remember the excitement of Kannan Balaram, an Indian student in Oulu, when he picked up a perfectly good jacket from the Pentecostal flea market for a couple of Euro,

Recently, when Indian Ambassador His Excellency Raveesh Kumar visited Oulu, I had packed all my clothes and they were not accessible from  the container in Ruusko. We were shifting residence at that time. I visited Kontti and bought a pair of trousers, a jacket, a shirt, tie, a belt and even a pair of socks for €30 to wear for the occasion!

Togged up from the flea market to meet 

Ambassador HE Raveesh Kumar!

The fourth type of flea market is one which buys general stuff as furniture, vacuum cleaners, etc., on the market and the general public, ensures they are working and then sells them with their mark up. Good buys are possible here.

The fifth type of flea market are those who rent you a small table/

booth. You put your stuff there with a price tag and code and you settle accounts at regular intervals. I have one on permanent rent at one of these flea markets. It is a great business idea, although it is not so valuable for me now as I am hampered in movement with my amputated leg.

The final type of flea markets are those where they give you a table and you put your stuff there and interact directly with the buyer.

We have taken part with all these types of flea markets and have managed all successfully.

It is good fun and you get bargains and also make good money if you study each type of market carefully. We furnished 80 apartments for our furnished apartment business almost entirely out of flea markets. 

When the first Indian IT team from Patni and LnT Infotech arrived in Oulu, we took them to the flea markets to help them furnish their apartments. My little trailer was used to take the stuff home.

I remember when Sreekanth Kanjarla arrived with his family I took them to a flea market in Toppila. Just as we arrived there was someone who had come to get rid of their surplus stuff. We did not even enter the flea market as we transferred their stuff from their trailer directly to my trailer. That was fun and one of the "best buys" ever! :-)

Annikki has an eye for art and quality and was very thrifty. She soon discovered many valuable things in the second hand markets that were in Oulu. 

The flea market run by the Pentecostal church was especially good as she found good buys there, especially semi-disposable stuff as skis snd skates for the children, good plates, cutlery, blankets, and little curios. Skates and skis have a lifetime of just a year, so why waste good money buying new stuff?

Annikki was always proud of the stuff she found after spending just a few Finnish marks at a time. As they say in India “it was a good time pass”.

But when she bought something,  she knew exactly how they would fit in our home! Some people who visited our earlier homes would recognise they were in Annikki's personal museum!

She had Finnish “sisu” as when she saw a good buy she would buy it straight away. She knew good things would not last long in the flea market.

Once when we were living in a penthouse on Torikatu, one evening when I looked out of the window I saw her carting a huge living room real oak centre table on her bicycle! There was her small frame pushing the cycle home behind a table mounted over the handlebars. Even now she laughs heartily when I remind her of this incident!

The table and much of the stuff as the valuable crystal flower 

vase at the back were all bought at flea markets!

She knew that this table was just the thing she wanted. We have it today in our living room after almost 23 years later.

In an earlier post on this blog, many many years ago, you will find another report on Oulu flea markets. 

To find the ones functioning today just Google “Oulu kirpputori” and the results of at least 11 of the popular ones active now should pop up.

Don't be a snob and live like the regular Finns do! :-)

Hope you enjoy flea marketing!

Findians

Indian contingent due in Oulu

Posted on Jacob's Blog and the Oulu CHAFF Blog.

November 2007 will see a large increase of the Indian engineer population in Oulu. There is a contingent of 20 Indians some with wives and children due to arrive in Oulu during the month.

The first group of 5 are already scheduled to arrive on the 1st of November. The others are waiting for their visas and other papers to arrive.

They are looking for houses, furnished if possible, to rent.

If any of you have any offers to make, please get in touch with me and let me know, as I can put you in direct touch with those arriving.

If they are unable to get furnished appartments, they may need furniture and other household equipment. If you have any, please let me know as I am compiling a list of stuff required against what is available.

Kamu just informed me that he has a good dining table with 4 chairs available for under € 100. We were able to provide a tv, coffee maker, toaster to a young student last week from our existing stock. We still have lots of cups, saucers, glasses, from the summer flea market remains.

This week's CHAFF meeting will be at the Coffee Shop, entrance on Isokatu as well as from the Rotuari Square. Those attending will probably be there after 13:00 hours.

One of the questions that we may discuss this week is the setting up of a Kindergarten, especially for the children who may have to go back to the Indian Education System, which can never be from a Finnish run Play Schools.

This is an enormous social issue and one which needs to be taken very seriously. If there are enough people interested, then we should take it up with the companies, especially the Indian companies, who are deputing their personnel to Oulu.

My recent discussion with the Oulu City Manager for International Affairs was rather disappointing on this front concerning one child, who, because of the pressure we put, will now get admission into an English Platy School by January 2008, after having had to languish in a Finnush language Play School for over a year.

Let it be understood that Oulu, although it claims to be an International City, is far from being International, and the City Authorities neither have the resources or the will to help out those who need their help. They may write nice letters, but that is just not enough!

As was so correctly put by one family (to the City Manager of Oulu International Affairs) which has gone through misery and from pillar to post:

"Thanks you for your understanding.

Teachers in xxxxxxxx Kindergarten asked us to give an application to the yyyyyyyyyy kindergarten.  We gave the application. It was in fact the same application which my wife gave to yyyyyyyyyy in Nov 2006.

They told us that there may be openings in 2008 only.

I think this is too late for us.

We have severe problems with Language issues already now.

Since our native language is not Finnish and our stay in Finland is not confirmed to be permanent, we want to pursue our daughter's studies in English. We are unable to help her with her simple questions due to the language issue. This is getting worse day by day.

May you please expedite this matter and help us in getting some place in yyyyyyyyyy sooner than 2008.

Thanks again for your time."

To solve these problems, yet to be able to meet the requirements of a short stay in Finland, it is imperative that the Indian Style Kindergarten has to be started in Oulu. Annikki and I are willing to help, but the onus must lie on the Indian Companies who are deputing their staff to live and work in Oulu. Expect nothing but lip service and a lot of red tape from local authorities who are just not in the know of what an international environment demands!

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