KARACHI: His Excellency Mr. Harri Kämäräinen Ambassador of Finland in Pakistan and Ms. Sadia Khan Honorary Consul General of Finland in Karachi had arranged an exhibition at the prestigious Alliance Française de Karachi. Title of the exhibition was “Innovative Designs from Finland”.
According to Ms. Sadia Khan Honorary Consul General of Finland in Karachi; “purpose of this exhibition is to create awareness about most innovative designs from Finland that can be seen around the world”.
Mr. Harri Kämäräinen Ambassador of Finland in Pakistan was the guest of honour for this exhibition and he had flown into Karachi especially for this exhibition. Mr. Harri Kämäräinen also holds similar position for three other Asian countries namely Bhutan, Maldives and Sri Lanka.
Mr. Harri Kämäräinen Ambassador of Finland took the centre stage and started his speech in Urdu which was greeted with loud appraisal from all around. Ambassador then like a seasoned diplomat spoke in English and said; “at the time of independence almost 100 ago, Finland was the poorest country in Europe, we had to literally start from ground zero as we never had rich monarchy to lean onto. Our fore-fathers had to build Finland from scratch and with everyone on board”.
Ambassador said; “Finland gained independence during first World War, when most of men were at borders defending Finland and women had too much do from raising and feeding kids at home, and also arranging to send food for men on borders. This situation gave birth to creation of utensils etc that were meant for survival and to be durable also. This is main reason why Finnish-designs or Nordic-designs are very plain, simple, pragmatic and down to earth without much colours. Early era of Finnish Designers ranging from textile designers, industrial designers, and fashion designers etc were plain, simple, pragmatic and down to earth. That era is often referred as Green-Gray era. After Second World War 2 during early fifties it was felt that Green-Gray reality had to change and with slight shift in attitude by introducing bright colours resulted in change of mood of the entire nation”.
He said; “after change of attitude from Finnish side, many Finnish designers gained prominence and made customers all over the world. Some of early valued customers included Mrs. Jaqueline Kennedy and then many US first ladies were addicted to Finnish designs, lately Mrs. Hillary Clinton had been smitten by Finnish designs”.
On the concluding note Mr. Harri Kämäräinen Ambassador of Finland in Pakistan said; “purpose of this exhibition is to create awareness about Finnish designs and innovations and thanked Ms. Sadia Khan Honorary Consul General of Finland in Karachi and her team for putting up all the efforts to arrange this excellent exhibition”. BIZ TODAY REPORT
