The Suomenlinna Toy Museum is a private, family-owned company that started in 1985. The museum is based on the collections of Piippa Tandefelt, an artist in ceramics. The museum collections include a countless number of toys from the early 19th century to the 1960’s. The items are collected in Finland and are thus a part of the Finnish cultural history.

Piippa Tandefelt (born in 1939) bought the first old toys primarily for her daughter in the end of the 1960’s. Piippa Tandefelt worked as an artist in ceramics at the time. In fact Piippa was one of the originators of Pot Viapori, a shared ceramics workshop in Suomenlinna.

Years later Piippa Tandefelt began to see the value of antiquities: “Why do we keep on manufacturing new things to this world that already is ready, when we could cherish old things instead?” Piippa’s ideas were provoked by the disposable culture of the 1970’s and the plastic furniture of the time, not to mention the general eagerness to destroy and throw away all that was old.

Piippa started a small antique shop in the centre of Helsinki. Soon it became widely known that there is this antique shopkeeper who is mad about old toys, and her collection of old toys became bigger and bigger.

The year 1979 was Unesco’s International Year of the Child, and the Nordic Arts Centre in Suomenlinna asked Piippa’s toy collection for their theme exhibition. The exhibition was a success and Piippa was asked whether her toys could be displayed for public on a regular basis.

The Suomenlinna Toy Museum was opened in 1985 in the basement of Piippa’s own house. The cellar was altered for the particular purpose of founding a museum. At the beginning of the 1990’s, a small café was set up at the museum. The picturesque café with its homemade delicacies brings extra income and helps in keeping the toy collection for display.

In 2003 Piippa handed the museum over to her daughter Petra Tandefelt (born in 1966).

The collection is widened constantly. A separate room for special exhibitions was opened in the museum house in 2006. In the first year there was an exhibition of Käthe Kruse dolls and in 2007 there were paper dolls on display. A theatre for children (Sulake) is given the use of the back yard of the house for the summers 2005-2008 in order to get new visitors and make the Toy Museum more widely known.

The Suomenlinna Toy Museum is a company that does not receive financial aid from the government or any other authority. The museum has approximately ten thousand visitors per year. Both the museum and the café have devoted customers who come from all over the world. We are grateful for all the support we can get, even if it is merely psychological: A happy customer is our best salesman!