(b Viipuri (now Vyborg, Russia) 1911; d Santorini, Greece, 1989).
Finnish ceramic and glass designer. In 1945 he joined Arabia porcelain factory, where he dispensed with the notion of the china set in favour of mix and match tableware. His best known series was ‘Kilta’ (designed in 1948, sold from 1953 and relaunched in 1981 as ‘Teema’), which was available in several colours and was enormously practical: he dispensed with decorative rims and shaped the surfaces so that they could be easily stacked. He also worked for the Nuutajärvi glassworks, for whom he produced both functional glass and decorative pieces. In both ceramics and glass, Kaj was probably the most influential designer of the 20th century....