TODAY IS TOM OF FINLAND'S BIRTHDAY!

Wherever you are. Raise your glasses. 

Celebrate Tom's Birthday.

Throw a happening. Hang out with friends. Hit a club.

Gather together. Invite all your friends. Hook up.

Tom was born Touko Valio Laaksonen on 8th May 1920, in Kaarina, southwest Finland. The Finnish word for the month of May is "Touko".

DURK DEHNER & RICK CASTRO- CIRCA 2008

In 1956 Laaksonen submitted drawings to the influential American magazine Physique Pictorial, 

which premiered the images in the 1957 Spring issue under the pseudonym Tom, as it resembled his given name Touko. In the Winter issue later that year, editor Bob Mizer coined the credit Tom of Finland.

 One of his pieces was featured on the Spring 1957 cover, depicting two log drivers at work with a third man watching them. Pulled from the Finnish mythology of lumberjacks representing strong masculinity, Laaksonen emphasized and privileged "homoerotic potentiality... relocating it in a gay context",

 a strategy repeated throughout his career.

 Artforum- Kevin Killian said Tom of Finland “produces a strong respect for his nimble, witty creation”.

Kate Wolf writes that “Tom of Finland helped pave the way to gay liberation”.

In 1999, an exhibition took place at the Institut Culturel Finlandais (Finnish Cultural Centre) in Paris.

In 2013, MOCA presented Bob Mizer & Tom of Finland in Los Angeles, USA.

In September 2014 the Finnish postal service, Itella Posti, published a set of three first class stamps featuring drawings by Tom of Finland.

 The stamps include portions of an illustration of a nude man sitting between the legs of another man dressed as a police officer; the other depicts nude buttocks with a man's face 

included between the thighs.

 The stamp set exceeded Posti's expectations, with pre-orders from 178 countries, making it the best-selling stamp set in the service's history.


PLEASE JOIN RICK CASTRO
 IN HONORING TOM OF FINLAND'S 97TH BIRTHDAY
 @ TOM OF FINLAND TEA SALON- MARCH 10TH- DETAILS HERE-