Eliel Saarinen (1873–1950)
Loja Saarinen (1879–1968)
Zoltan Sepeshy (1898–1974)
Pipsan Saarinen Swanson (1905–1979)
Eero Saarinen (1910–1961)
Wallace Mitchell (1911–1977)
Roy Slade (1933–2022)
Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research, Cranbrook Academy of Art
39221 Woodward Avenue, Bloomfield Hills, MI 48304
248-645-3315
ABOUT
Saarinen House served as the home, studio, and garden of the Finnish American Saarinen family, including architect, designer, and painter Eliel Saarinen, and weaver and designer Loja Saarinen. Completed in 1930, it is a unique example of a Modern, Art Deco-style domestic space realized through Arts and Crafts methodologies.
Saarinen House visitors experience an extraordinary total work of art–the jewel of Cranbrook’s world-renown National Historic Landmark campus. The impeccably restored interior features the Saarinens’ original furnishings, including Eliel’s delicately veneered furniture and Loja’s sumptuous textiles, as well as painted ornamentation by their daughter Pipsan Saarinen Swanson and early furniture designs by their son, Eero Saarinen.
Founded in 1904 by newspaper publishers George Gough Booth and Ellen Scripps Booth with utopian aspirations in mind, Cranbrook now includes a private Pre-K to 12 school system; Cranbrook Academy of Art, a graduate art school where its first five presidents lived in Saarinen House; an earth sciences and natural history museum; a contemporary art museum; and Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research, a history center that oversees Saarinen House and two more house museums.
SPECIAL RESOURCES
“The Cranbrook weavings . . . were created in an atmosphere where things needed are made, not ordered, and where creative effort and achievement [are] as natural as breathing.”
— Art Critic, Florence Davies, on the Weavings of Loja Saarinen
“Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context—a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, [an] environment in a city plan. “
— Eliel Saarinen, quoted by his son Eero Saarinen (Time, July 2, 1956)
Loja Saarinen (1879–1968)
Born Louise Gesellius, in Helsinki, Finland, Loja Saarinen is known today primarily as a weaver—a legacy that she helped to define but which mischaracterizes her many roles at Cranbrook. An artist in her own right when she married architect Eliel Saarinen in 1904, she studied at the Art School of the Finnish Academy in Helsinki (Konstföreningen) and trained in sculpture at the Académie Colarossi in Paris, the same school where Swedish sculptor Carl Milles perfected his art.
At the top of her roles as entrepreneur and designer, Loja Saarinen led Studio Loja Saarinen, an innovative weaving studio that produced rugs, curtains, and fabrics for use at Cranbrook and around the country. Loja’s management of the enterprise followed corporate design studio strategies rather than those of the art world and ideas of single authorship. Parallel to that work, Loja was the head of the Department of Weaving and Textile Design at Cranbrook Academy of Art. She also designed not only the Saarinen House landscape, selecting the textures of the shrubs and trees like a weaver selecting yarns, but also the iconic landscape surrounding the Triton Pools in front of Cranbrook Art Museum. And, as if all of this was not enough, she also collaborated with Eliel on his architectural projects, sculpting large-scale clay models and directing photography.
LEARN MORE
Eliel Saarinen rose to prominence in 1900 with his design for the Finnish pavilion at the Paris International Exposition. Working from his home and studio, Hvitträsk, Saarinen helped develop a regional variation of the Arts and Crafts Movement that incorporated influences from French Art Nouveau, Austrian Secessionists, and Finnish folklore.
In 1922, Eliel was runner-up in the Chicago Tribune Tower Competition. His proposal transformed skyscraper design and prompted the family to emigrate to America, eventually arriving at Cranbrook in 1925. Over the next two decades he designed Cranbrook’s School for Boys, Academy of Art, including Saarinen House, Kingswood School for Girls, Institute of Science, and the Academy’s Art Museum and Library. While known as an architect, Eliel trained first as a painter and continued to paint throughout his life.
Loja Saarinen studied at the Art School of the Finnish Academy in Helsinki and trained in sculpture at the Academy Colarossi in Paris. For Hvitträsk, where the Saarinens lived after their marriage in 1904, Loja designed furniture and lighting, produced sculptures, and designed and maintained a formal garden. She frequently collaborated with Eliel on his architectural projects, sculpting large-scale clay models and directing photography—work that would continue in America.
At Cranbrook, Loja worked not only as a weaver, but also as a designer, landscape gardener, and entrepreneur. She designed the Saarinen House landscape, and the iconic landscape surrounding the Triton Pools in front of Cranbrook Art Museum.
It is her work as the founder and head of Studio Loja Saarinen, a commercial weaving studio, that established her reputation. In addition to textiles for Cranbrook, including Saarinen House, the Studio completed commissions for residences, businesses, and offices across the country. These included rugs and upholstery fabric commissioned by Frank Lloyd Wright for Edgar J. Kaufmann’s private office in Pittsburgh.
After Eliel’s death in 1950, Loja moved off campus into a home designed by Eero and Saarinen House became the home of the Academy of Art’s next four presidents: painter Zoltan Sepeshy, painter Wallace Mitchell, architect Glen Paulson, and painter Roy Slade. The house opened as a museum in 1994.
