Aleksi Puustinen

Lillelund, Lærke

Cabinetmaker

It all started with skateboards

Aleksi makes furniture out of used skateboards
He often learns on the job
He feels a well made piece looks good from all perspectives

Aleksi Puustinen was destined for a career in craftsmanship, even if he didn’t realise it back then. Working with his hands has been essential ever since he and his friends, as kids, would build skateboarding obstacles by collecting material from building sites and the streets. His master, so to speak, was his grandfather, a skilled craftsman. He first studied woodwork at a vocational school, before continuing to art school where he is currently taking a BA in Furniture Design. Sources of inspiration are infinite: nature, architecture, travelling, books, art, everyday life. His breakthrough happened in 2014 when he won second place in a Finnish crafts contest with a stool.

Interview

What techniques do you use?: I’ve created a way of laminating used skateboards together. But I don’t want to tie myself to just one material or technique. Currently, I’m playing around with bio-based materials such as mycelium – the root system of fungi – and others made from bio-waste developed in our company Caracara Collective.
How do tradition and innovation come together in your work?: The tools, techniques, styles and knowledge have been around for decades, centuries or millennia. I try to break as well as connect the boundaries and seek alternative approaches. Turn things upside down and you might find something interesting. I mix Scandinavian minimalism with colourful elements of my own.
What do you love most about being an artisan?: It hardly ever feels like work and you learn a lot from its diversity. It’s like puzzle solving; you enter a meditative state, everything else fades, and you focus 100 percent on the ongoing work. You can never fully master the craft and there is always room for improvement.
What might people not initially realise about your work?: How time-consuming it is to design and produce a piece from the idea to a finished product, especially when you make the material yourself. You think about the project around the clock. The world between free time and work often blurs; it makes the pricing difficult.

Aleksi Puustinen is an expert artisan: he began his career in 2015 and he started teaching in 2021