7 ideas for timeless design gifts – these will bring the recipient joy year after year

Did you get invited to a Midsummer party, someone’s holiday home or a friend’s house? Even though meeting people you like is the most heart-warming thing about the visit, it is still nice to give the host or hostess a beautiful, high-quality gift – such as a Finnish design item! We picked seven ideas for gifts available in our selection, representing Finnish design at its best.

No need to panic!

Jalo Design’s Oiva fire extinguisher, representing the latest in extinguisher technology, is a great gift to give when visiting someone: inventive, stylish and useful. This small, effective and maintenance-free fire extinguisher gets its name from Oiva Toikka, Finnish designer and glass artist famous for his birds, who hand-crafted the first Oiva of the flock. When cooking goes according to plan, Oiva is happy to just sit on the kitchen counter and look adorable, but in the event of a grease fire, for example, it can be used as a fire extinguisher that works like a standard spray bottle. If an accident happens and Oiva has to be used for what it was designed to do, the biodegradable fire-extinguishing agent is easy to clean off.

• Oiva fire extinguisher by Jalo Helsinki >
• All fire safety >

Take a sea salt bath

In Hetkinen’s artisanal items, you can really see and smell the high quality. The salt soap made in Finland is a charming, practical and eco-friendly gift that can be used for many pampering baths. In addition to skin-caring olive oil, Finnish rapeseed oil and coconut butter, the round soap contains sea salt and essential eucalyptus and lemon oils. In other words, the soap is a real skin-care marvel full of minerals, antioxidants and vitamins. The dish made of pine heartwood, which comes with the soap, completes the serene bathing experience and also brings a piece of Finnish forests to urban homes.

• Salt soap set by Hetkinen >
• All soaps >

A gift that does good

Wooden’s Offcuts Blackbird is a beautiful item with many interesting stories to tell. The life-sized bird sculptures designed by Ola Kukkasniemi are made of Finnish pine left over from furniture production. The Blackbirds are carved based on the Digital Craftsmanship concept developed by Wooden, challenging the notion of traditional craftsmanship; fully automatically, using machining robots and at night when electricity is cheaper. Each winged creature is a unique, numbered individual, for the sale of which 10 euros are donated to the Let’s Save the Old-Growth Forests of Upper Lapland campaign by the Finnish Natural Heritage Foundation. The Blackbird and the accompanying certificate of the donation are packed in a stylish gift box filled with wood shavings.

• Offcuts Blackbird by Wooden >
• All figurines >

Blue-and-white nostalgia

Arabia’s Pastoraali vase makes for an inventive gift to someone who likes fresh colors and interiors with a retro vibe. For the pattern designed in 1965, ceramic artist Esteri Tomula drew inspiration from old pastoral poetry, which is why it features flowers, leaves, a mysterious female figure and birds about to take flight, among others. When giving a Pastoraali pot as a gift, you can complement it with, for instance, a suitable house plant, herb or even a tomato seedling.

• Pastoraali vase by Arabia >
• All planters and plant pots >

The one and only – and orange

The ergonomic, light and sharp scissors by Fiskars are a 50-year-old, world-renown design item – and what would make for a more classic and practical gift when visiting someone at their holiday home or abroad! The story goes that the world’s first scissors with plastic handles got, in part by accident, their currently patented color in 1967 when the person operating the handle machine decided to first use all the orange material in the machine. The colors that the designer Olof Bäckström had been thinking of were green and black, among others... Since then, over a billion pairs of the Classic scissors have been sold worldwide and the scissors have been included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

• Classic scissors by Fiskars >
• All scissors >

Textiles for the sauna

The Nebularis sauna seat cover by Metsä/Skogen brings the Finnish forest to your (or your friend's!) home sauna. The durable cloth protects your skin from the heat and adorns the sauna bench with a serene pattern featuring coniferous trees.

• Nebularis seat cover by Metsä/Skogen >
• All sauna accessories >

Linen for the summer kitchen

Eeva by Lapuan Kankurit is, and proudly so, a dishcloth – necessary in both everyday life and after parties, woven with uncompromising skill in an Ostrobothnian family company. The ecological and absorbent material is a blend of washed linen, cotton and Tencel that dries quickly and stays fresh in use. That’s why it is equally suitable for use as a facecloth or for wiping eyeglasses. The cloth is available in soft colors, such as gold, rose, gray and olive.

• Eeva dishcloth by Lapuan Kankurit >
• All housekeeping >

See also:

• More summer gifts at Finnish Design Shop >

Text: Kaisa Mikkola Images: Manufacturers

Featured products may not be available worldwide. This article was updated on 5 June, 2024.