“Home is my caring nest in an otherwise hectic life,” says Finnish designer Mika Matikainen. In an outwardly sedate early 1900s clapboard building, hidden among the wooden houses of Helsinki neighbourhood Puu-Vallila, the co-founder of eyewear company Paloceras has created a colourful bubble — an escape for Matikainen, his partner and their two-year-old twins, who bring “their own sweet chaos”, he says with a smile.
The family moved into the property a year ago. “It’s like a sketchbook, always in progress,” says Matikainen, who with his long hair, wispy goatee and wolfish cheekbones, looks like he has stepped out of a Delacroix canvas. His eclectic, romantic yet impish, taste has been cultivated during a peripatetic career that includes starting a digital design agency at the age of 18 before joining the creative agency Activeark.
In 2022, Matikainen launched Paloceras with the French-Canadian designer Alexis Perron-Corriveau, who he had met at design school L’école cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ECAL) in Switzerland a couple of years earlier. “We spent a year hiking in the Alps, talking, sharing ideas,” he recalls. They based the company in Lisbon, however, where Perron-Corriveau now lives, because “Switzerland is so boring and expensive.” Their bold spectacles and sunglasses are characterised by chunky frames and bright Mediterranean hues. They are not very Finnish.
Neither, for that matter, is Matikainen’s home. It’s a busy repository of objects and art acquired during periods spent in Berlin, London, Lausanne and Lisbon; there’s a vintage-style inlaid table from Switzerland; a tablecloth found in a charity shop in Lewisham — pieces that shake up the aesthetic of more local finds, such as the heavily-ticking white ceramic clock by Arabia, the Finnish design brand where his grandmother worked as an illustrator. “Things might change slowly, respecting the house’s character and age,” he says. “Imperfections can feel like part of the composition.” Its myriad nooks and corners “can be inspiring or soothing depending on the day and its energy”.
We sit down to honeyed tea and pistachio buns in the dining room, its walls painted a deep claret red. “This room is my favourite,” says Matikainen. “It’s not a regular colour to see in Finland. And when it’s dark, it’s almost black. When the candles are lit the atmosphere is intense. You focus on the discussion.”
It’s a space that has the feel of a literary salon. Covering one wall, a faded French 17th-century tapestry depicts woodlands and castle ruins; a 1960s Italian light with a pink-fringed shade — “bought for €24 on an online auction site; the shipping was more expensive than the light” — hangs over the dining table. A Serbian ceramic sculpture of a sea creature — part hedgehog, part coral — sits on a cabinet shelf. “It’s called Mauri,” he says. “Our WiFi is named after it.”
The cool, some would say chilly, Nordic aesthetic, feels an alien prospect. “According to one character test, I’m from Brazil,” he smiles. He also appreciates the Victorian feel of London, where he was living from 2019 to 2021, while finishing a thesis for an MBA at the Berlin School of Creative Leadership.
He relocated to Helsinki during the pandemic and wound his way to the neighbourhood of Puu-Vallila — designed in the early 20th century by Finnish architect Karl Hård af Segerstad along “garden city” principles, as an urban development for working people. Finished in 1913, it remains an island of calm pocketed between dual carriageways, a quiet quarter of the city yet in proximity to the bustle of downtown. It’s gentrified but in ramshackle fashion; kids’ buggies are parked up alongside graffiti.
“It has many upsides: charming old wooden houses, inspiring colours and a few great local spots,” says Matikainen. His favourites include Helsingin kahvipaahtimo, “one of the best coffee roasters in town”; Bar Petiit; Pikku-Vallila café, and the Michelin Guide-listed restaurant Plein. But despite these hip hang-outs, the area still has an old-world charm. “Time feels a bit softer here,” he says.
Matikainen grew up in the early 1990s in Lahti, a regional capital some 100km north of Helsinki in the Finnish lake district. “When I was young, I had two favourite activities: if I wasn’t drawing, I was playing with Lego,” he recalls. “I built, I created worlds and came up with characters for them.”
His father’s job at an energy company provided the family with access to the latest computing hardware. “I realised quickly that Microsoft Paint had an endless supply of drawing paper,” he says. “Then came the internet, and nothing was the same again. I realised that it was possible to reach basically anyone in the world, a truly intoxicating feeling for a young boy in a small Finnish town.”
But later, he grew restless. “I’d been working with computers for so long and I just started to grow out of them,” says Matikainen. His move back to Finland coincided with a pivot from digital design to working on material products. Yet he had no idea of the myriad components and requirements involved in making spectacles and sunglasses. “It turns out that eyewear is one of the most complex design products because it’s a fashion accessory and a category-one medical device at the same time. There are a lot of regulations.”
Matikainen is now keen to expand the brand into playful accessories, including silk scarves based on the smudged make-up of the British drag queen Bo Quinn. “I love creating above anything else,” he says. “It’s been both a blessing and a curse. Obviously, it would be easier to learn one thing well and stick to it, but I keep challenging myself by marinating my creative spirit in new adventures.”
A tour of the house provides plenty of evidence of that spirit. From a stairwell painted “poison yellow” we arrive at the attic, where the main bedroom is Wedgwood blue; the children’s bedroom is emerald green; and a playroom has one wall featuring Matikainen’s whimsical drawing of a man’s face. In the basement, alongside a store of firewood and a bulge of bedrock (often part of the foundations of Helsinki homes), Matikainen shows me two coal cupboards he aims to turn into fermenting stores for pickles.
His studio is in a converted stable block, where designs of sunglasses sit alongside books on British Surrealism. The building also houses a sauna under the eaves, reached by a set of stairs featuring half-width steps, like you might find on a yacht. “These are called ‘witch stairs’ because back in the day people slept upstairs and in order to keep the witches away, they made the stairs as complex as possible,” says Matikainen.
The garden is shared with his octogenarian neighbour, a woman who has lived in Puu-Vallila for 30 years. “I have my coffee table on my side, she has her coffee table on her side, and we talk quite often about the flowers,” says Matikainen. “She was the chair of the neighbourhood association for a long time. The city of Helsinki tried to demolish this whole neighbourhood in the 1970s to build some boring new houses.” A preservation campaign by locals, spearheaded by his neighbour, eventually won. “She’s quite a package,” he says. “And it’s nice to have a lovely person sharing the same space.”
As I finish my tea, Matikainen says that he’d like to make his home still more unconventional. “For instance, I love butterflies. I’d like to grow them here, inside, so it’s possible to see the metamorphosis from a caterpillar, which usually happens at night,” he says. “In the morning you would have butterflies flying around the house.” It’s an apt image on which to leave: a hothouse of colourful creativity.
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