Leena-Kaisa Halme was born around 1940 in Helsinski and is recognised as a major Finnish tapestry artist. From the age of 19, she taught courses on the Rya: a hand-woven, long-haired woollen rug in which the pattern appears identical on both sides.

Leena-Kaisa Halme, a prodigy from Helsinki who has been teaching rya since the age of 19, has demonstrated her expertise and familiarity with the medium through her choice of abstract motifs and shimmering, jewel-like colours. Rya Tapestries is a misnomer if you define each word precisely. A rya is traditionally a one-of-a-kind shaggy woollen rug, woven by the artist who created the design and chose the colours. A tapestry is woven by hand using a traditional tapestry stitch and the design appears identical on both sides.

Alongside Jean Cocteau and Tadek Beutlich, she was involved in the Mediterranean Industries project, a company set up by a group of British investors with the ambition of commissioning original carpets from exceptional European artists. ‘The British colony of Malta is preparing for independence in 1964, and is desperately looking for a new industry to bring much-needed capital and jobs to the island,’ explains Lorentzen.
Maltese society wants to develop a new industry on the island, with a view to its future independence. Artists travel to Malta to train local weavers. ‘With a tradition of home weaving already established among the women of Malta, a cottage industry, such as carpet weaving, seemed a natural start.’ Mr Lorentzen. Production is limited to 50 pieces, some of which are exported. This residency gave rise to the exhibition ‘The School of Malta’ at Malta House in London in 1963.

French writer and painter Jean Cocteau, on the other hand, showed his lack of familiarity with the rug by creating motifs that are slightly distorted rather than enhanced by the depth of the pile. His colours, which vibrate in combinations of turquoise, green and yellow, contrast sharply with the more subtle tonal counterpoints of the artists described as Rya.

Helmi Vuorelma, Helmi Vuorelma, textile artist, was born in 1886 in Russia and died in 1948 in Lathi, Finland. A graduate of the Wetterhoff School of Crafts, she started her company Takana Tapestry in Lathi in 1909. During the 1930s, the weaving company employed up to 300 people, many of them mothers working from home. It produced national costumes in the 1910s. After the war and until the early 1950s, production was limited by a lack of raw materials. After the death of Helmi Vuorelma in 1948, the company switched from producing individual items to commercial production. Some models were also sourced from outside designers.

In 2010 Helmi Vuorelma Oy moved to the Jarvelka weaving mill in Karkoi. In 2014, the company filed for bankruptcy. Kari Kuronen takes over the production of national costumes and ryiyas (Finnish woollen rugs).

Mediterranean Industries (a British company) and Tadek Beutlich (1922/2011) (a skilled rya artist) have joined forces on the island of Malta to produce ‘Rya Tapestries’. Distributed by Unika Vaev, a Danish carpet and fabric company, the results can be found on the third floor of Georg Jensen.

This piece appears later in Leena-Kaisa Halme's practice, and the stylistic change is significant: the weave is looser, the motifs more defined and only two colours are used, whereas at the beginning of her career she produced tapestries with predominantly light and ochre tones. Takana is a fabric whose two sides are bound together at the edges. This double fabric retains the same motifs, but the colours are reversed on the two sides. The motif represents cut rye, a cereal that can withstand the short summer in this Nordic country.
The artist's rugs are often titled like paintings, with names that suggest the compositional mood of each unique work. This one is called ‘Kaski’, a motif of rye cut from a landscape cleared by slash-and-burn methods.

Some of these works have been acquired by the Finnish State Art Commission (Valtion taideteostoimikunta). It is also part of Tuomas Sopanen's private collection, the fourth largest Finnish collection of ryijy.

Bibliography :
Lassaigne, Jacques, ‘Tapisseries finlandaises’, Exhibition organised by the Musée d'art de la Ville de Paris, 24 November 1972 to 7 January 1973, Les Presses artistiques.