Metsovaara

Metsovaara was a Finnish textile designer who has created the most fantastic designs and fabrics. She is considered being the greatest modern textile designer of all time. 

Lovely to see they are now being reprinted - so that we can enjoy and rejoice over them again!

Marjatta was born in 1927 in Turku, but during the financial crisis the years 1930s the family moved to Urjalankylä (55 km from Tampere, 165 km from Helsinki), where her father started a carpet factory named Suomen Matto Oy.

First she started girls school in Tampere, and after that continued her studies at School of Art in Helsinki. In 1949 Marjatta graduated as textile designer at Ateneum (now Aalto University) and went to work at her father´s carpet factory. It was a tough start since the difficult financial times in Finland after the war created scarcity of raw material - this of course complicated her start in the career, and her endless creativity made big changes.

In 1954 she established her company Metsovaara Oy and started a new weaving mill in Urjalankylä  . Marjatta's new designs were delivering good sales in Finland and also abroad, since she was participating in several international exhibitions. Her fame came first in the US.

Her textile career also consisted of long-pile rugs. Here the design Simpukka is highly appreciated - both as a rug and as a print.

In 1962 Marjatta founded a modern weaving mill in Sint-Niklaas, Belgium, to cope with the demand of furniture fabrics for contract and the furniture industry. Many railway companies and airline companies like Finnair and Sabena were supplied with these high technological fabrics.

Marjatta's design played a major role in the modernization of Finnish home interior design at that time. She experimented with material and developed her very own style. Her most productive years were between 1954-1970.

Marjatta continued her work as a textile designer until 1985, when she moved to Nice, France, but she continued to develop designs her entire lifetime for the paper industry and fashion houses.