“Jewelry can serve a function other than just decoration – it can be a work of art.”
Jewelry artist and sculptor Björn Weckström is the internationally best-known Finnish jewelry designer. Together with Pekka Anttila, founder of Lapponia, he developed the brand's unique, scupturesque design language.
Artist Professor Björn Weckström’s career started with jewelry. He graduated in 1956 from Helsinki Goldsmith’s school, where he left an impression as a particularly gifted, creative student. Early in his career he designed clear, plain and geometrical silver jewelry that was in keeping with the spirit of the time.
Inspired by Weckström’s bold experimental designs and believing in his visions, Björn Weckström’s goldsmith school classmate Pekka Anttila invited Weckström to join him as a designer at his company Kruunu Koru in 1963. This marked the start of fruitful cooperation and a new style in jewelry design. In the same year, at Weckström’s suggestion, the company changed its name to Lapponia Jewelry, which was exotic sounding but also easily comprehensible both in Finland and abroad.
In 1965, the city of Rio de Janeiro organized a jewelry design competition to mark its 400th anniversary. The competition attracted a large number of participants from all over the world, but the winner was Björn Weckström’s necklace Flowering Wall. “Everything changed overnight,” Weckström tells us, remembering the victory. Weckström’s uneven matte gold jewelry, which resembled gold nuggets from Finnish Lapland, quickly gained worldwide recognition. Lapponia’s gold jewelry soon sold out in Central Europe. In response to the demand, Lapponia introduced new gold jewelry that drew inspiration from the gold of Lapland. International recognition paved the way for the new kind of design to succeed also in Finland.
“I saw gold from Lapland as a warm material,” Weckström says as he remembers his travels in Lapland, including a trip to dig for gold at the river Lemmenjoki in the late 1950s. These trips provided the inspiration for the matte glow of genuine gold from Lapland.
Jewelry made of gold from Lapland remained popular in the 1970s, but Weckström had also started designing silver jewelry, drawing particular inspiration from space. As in intriguing experiment, he combined jewelry with watches. “I wanted to create a ‘total look’ for accessorizing and complimenting the Lapponia jewelry range with matching wrist watches made from gold and silver. These watches were launched at the Baselworld exhibition in 1975,” explains Weckström. Weckström also designed watches that combined silver and acrylic, such as the futuristic Time Machine and Time Rod watches.
The timeless design of Weckström's jewelry delights from decade to decade. Photos from Fashion in Helsinki Fashion Show in May 2023 where Kalevala had the privilegde to style clothing brand Aalto International's new collection. Pictures by Guillaume Roujas.
Weckström’s space-themed silver jewelry was particularly well-loved and highly desired among collectors in Finland and abroad. Space was a relevant topic at the time, and it also intrigued Weckström. “My interpretation of space was not only about outer space but also the inner space of people.” In the late 1960s, Weckström had become interested in Zen Buddhism and meditation. The small figures in his silver jewelry depict a human’s relationship with the surrounding world and the universe. The epoch-making event of the era, man setting foot on the Moon, also captivated Weckström’s mind. “All these factors contributed to the designs known as my space silver jewelry,” Weckström believes.
At the beginning of the 1970s, Lapponia conducted an experiment that turned out to be significant: The company acquired an acrylic mass production machine from Germany. Weckström sketched jewelry with the intention of producing even, bright acrylic masses to accompany silver. However, the machine blew out steam that formed air bubbles in the acrylic mass. At first, the production staff found this to be an unfortunate error, but Weckström realized that the random bubbles gave the jewelry an exciting character. Combined with blue, green, red, and purple color pigments and tiny chips of gold, the acrylic mass turned into unique, original pieces of jewelry. The most well-known pieces from this line include the pendants Space Apple and Kilimanjaro, and the Petrified Lake ring.
A major turn in Björn Weckström’s career was the use of his Planetoid Valleys necklace in the first Star Wars movie in 1977. Tourists from Finland and abroad still come to the Kalevala store on Keskuskatu, Helsinki, to see this world-famous piece of jewelry. The story is legendary in Finnish jewelry art and the piece itself is iconic. Apart from admiring the necklace, people also buy and wear it, like Weckström’s other designs as well.
Björn Weckström is happy to hear that Kalevala is also starting to sell second-hand Lapponia jewelry under its Preloved concept. “That’s how things are today.” Lapponia jewelry has been available through the Finnish and international second hand markets for a long time. In Kalevala Jewelry’s own store, second-hand pieces are carefully restored by Kalevala’s goldsmiths. This will quite likely be an effective channel for many pieces of jewelry to find their way from the back of a drawer to a new owner and a new life. The story continues.
Björn Weckström designed his most iconic pieces for Lapponia Jewelry, which was acquired by Kalevala Jewelry in 2005. In the 2020 brand reform, Lapponia products were also branded as Kalevala. In the same year, Björn Weckström designed the Golden Chasm jewelry line for the renewed Kalevala brand.
Weckström’s unique design heritage lives on in the Kalevala collection, and now also in the Preloved selection of second-hand pieces in Finland.