Joutsa, central Finland

Eija and Sirkka live and work in Joutsa, Finland. They are wood carpenter and painter, and together they hand make wooden puzzles. All are cut and painted by hand so if two sets are mixed, they don’t puzzle any more.

Their wooden house is the perfect home and factory surrounded by Forest and lakes. Their garden has little wooden house for chicken family, producing really good eggs. They exchanges these eggs with neighbour who catches Muikku, little white fish from the lake. They get wood material from the neighbour wood factory. Their dry toilet is the state of Art. Their workshop is upstairs with high ceiling. Downstairs is living room. Behind the big window in this living room, we see Icelandic horse eating grass in the garden. When we were invited to their place, big table in front of this big window was filled with special food. Mushroom pie with mushroom they picked up and mixed with own eggs. Wild berry juice was made with berries they picked up. Their life is like perfectly beautiful puzzle piece.

The way they run their workshop, as well as their lives, inspired us to design the Small Hug puzzle back in 2010. Since then we’ve made many puzzles together. Eija and Sirkka have been making wooden puzzles for over 30 years.

Work of the Masters