Two beloved Finnish brands celebrating two big anniversaries – Artek, which turns 90, and Moomin, which turns 80 – link up for an unexpected and delightful design collaboration
The celebration of Moomin’s 80th anniversary has found a slew of collaborations with beloved Scandinavian brands from Acne Studios to Rue de Tokyo. Today another covetable collaboration was announced, this time with fellow Finnish brand Artek, which is celebrating its own 90th anniversary. In fact, the capsule collection with Moomin kicks off Artek’s own year-long festivities. Consisting of two Alvar Aalto-designed icons – the Celebration Stool 60 and the Celebration Cabinet 250 – etched with Tove Jansson’s Moomin characters, the collection is available March 20th.
“Tove [Jansson] used everything as a canvas,” says James Zambra, Creative Director at Moomin Characters. “Whether it was her medicine cabinet or a menu for her friends when they came over for dinner or a grocery list – she was always bringing the Moomins to these different surfaces.”
Both the stool and the cabinet are minimally decorated with Jansson’s Moomin doodles, giving the impression that the beloved Finnish artist herself had popped by for a dinner party and left some spontaneous artwork on the owner’s furniture. “We carefully selected doodle-like line drawings and hand-written texts from Tove Jansson’s earliest notebooks and Moomin stories, which talk about adventure, friendship, and celebration,” says Marianne Goebl, Managing Director of Artek. “To underline the personal note of the drawings, they are engraved all over the Stool, reminding of scribbles etched under an old school desk, and bringing the product to life.” The cabinet, meanwhile, offers an unexpected surprise, with the illustrations placed on the inside of the cabinet in a pen-drawn style.
These two Artek pieces, meanwhile, were handpicked to be adorned with the Moomin characters not only because they’re icons of Finnish design, but also because they represent a certain sort of merriment and togetherness – two concepts embodied by the Moomin family and Jansson herself. As Goebl puts it, the Stool 60 “makes sure there’s always an extra seat at the table” while the Cabinet 250, often referred to as the Cocktail Cabinet, “serves special gatherings as well as everyday needs”.
Though Moomin and Artek are both mainstays of Finnish design, their aesthetic expressions differ quite greatly. “It’s maybe a bit of an unexpected collaboration,” sats Zambra, noting that Artek embodies a more minimalistic style whilst the Moomins embody a different sort of aesthetic. “But in fact there are lots of links between Artek and Tove.” Most notably, Jansson had an Artek table, which she drew at in her studio.
Tove Jansson drawing on an Aalto table. .
But there’s a deeper similarity between the two Finnish brands, one that goes beyond aesthetics. “Artek and the Moomins share many values: an open mind for cosmopolitan movements and friendships, a deep respect for nature and an independent yet communitarian ethos, which is so strongly imbedded in Finnish society,” says Goebl. “Bringing beauty to the everyday with a sense of pragmatism and in harmony with nature, this is what unites Artek and the Moomins in the essence.”
The Artek and Moomin Celebration collection is available from March 20th