 Good evening, everyone. I'm Cara McCarty, curatorial director at Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum. We're thrilled to have you here this evening to join this very interesting, exciting discussion about design made by the hand. And in conversation from the iconic Finnish brand Mari Mekko and Matilda McQuaid, deputy curatorial director and head of textiles at Cooper Hewitt. Tonight's event is part of the Design by Hand series, a thrilling new collaboration between Cooper Hewitt and Van Cleef and Arpel. Design by Hand is a biannual, week-long program of educational conversations and workshops focusing on craftsmanship, innovation, and the important role of the hand in global design. Each week of immersive programming will spotlight a pioneering design organization through special programs that reach each of the museum's core audiences, high school students, universities, students, adults, and families. We are delighted to have Mari Mekko as a first in the series. And throughout this week, their designers have led wonderfully creative and colorful workshop up at Cooper Hewitt Design Center, offering insight into their different design processes. This series will continue in spring 2014 with American-designed pioneer Heat Ceramics. So please check the website, cooperhewitt.org, for further information. And we are immensely grateful to Van Cleef and Arpel for their vision, for their support of this unique program, and for the continued dedication to design education and discourse. The reason we are here in this beautiful space this evening is because Cooper Hewitt is undergoing the most extensive renovation project in its history, expanding gallery space by 60%, restoring historic features, and upgrading our facilities to greatly improve the visitor experience. We are excited to be collaborating with award-winning firm, Diller Scafidio and Renfrew, on envisioning our exhibition installations to make design stories come alive and transform the visitor experience from passive to participatory. We are also working with local projects, our media designer to develop engaging ways to access digital content at the museum and online. Next fall, one year from now, we will celebrate the grand reopening of Cooper Hewitt with great fanfare, and we hope to see all of you there. Before starting this discussion tonight, I would like to ask Inazita Gay, Director of Training and Professor Elie Kohl, Van Cleef & Arpell, in Paris to say a few words. Inazita Gay is an art historian who studied at Princeton University and who now serves as the head professor at Elie Kohl, Van Cleef & Arpell. Inazita spent her entire career as an executive with a great jewelry maison before creating an internal training and communications department for Van Cleef & Arpell USA. Her enthusiasm, love of sharing knowledge and her passion for jewelry make her the ideal individual to lead a Kohl teaching. Inazita Gay, thank you. Thank you, Kara. Van Cleef & Arpell's is so pleased to continue our wonderful relationship with Cooper Hewitt through the Design by Hand program. Although this program is new, Cooper Hewitt and Van Cleef & Arpell's have a great history together already, beginning with the Blockbuster exhibition set in style in 2011, one of the museum's most popular exhibitions. In fact, it was the hands-on workshops during the set in style exhibition that provided the inspiration for the Design by Hand series. The popularity of these workshops led by stellar designers from Van Cleef & Arpell's both from New York and Paris show that there is real hunger out there for high-level hands-on instruction in design for the general public. Les Kohl & Van Cleef & Arpell's in Paris continues the Maison's tradition of virtuoso craftsmanship and dedication to sharing knowledge and encouraging discourse on the importance of design. An international team of dedicated professionals lead courses aiming to deepen understanding, spark creative inspiration, and provoke dialogue about the history and the processes behind the master crafts of jewelry making. The aims of Les Kohl and Design by Hand are the same. To examine the important role that the human hand plays in design and the influence of traditional craftsmanship and traditional techniques that they have on contemporary design and innovation above all. Most importantly, to offer a platform for the public to experience the design process through practical hands-on workshops and discussion always. Throughout this week, I've had an amazing opportunity. You may have noticed I'm sort of floating. I don't even need to touch the ground because I've been watching this wonderful, cohesive unit of the Marameco team as they share their knowledge and talents with teenagers, college students, and they're even kind to us adults. It has been inspiring for me to watch and I really look forward to hearing some more tonight, a lot more, I hope. The discussion will be led by Matilda McQuade, who is the deputy curatorial director and head of textiles at Cooper Hewitt. Matilda proposes and organizes national and international exhibitions and publications and oversees one of the premier textile collections in the whole world, including more than 27,000 textiles produced even more than 2,000 years ago, beginning with the Han Dynasty. Since joining Cooper Hewitt in 2002 as the exhibition's curator and head of the textiles department, Matilda has curated a number of critically acclaimed exhibitions, including Joseph and Annie Albers' Designs for Living, Extreme Textiles, Designing for High Performance, and Color Moves, the art and fashion of Sonia de'Lonay. Please join me in welcoming Matilda McQuade. Thank you, Inazita. You make me sound really amazing. Hope I can live up to it. And good evening to everyone. We're so glad you're here for this evening. You're gonna be in for a real treat. We have some three incredible designers as Inazita has already kind of described who's been doing incredible workshops and I think we're gonna have, we're wrapping their time here in New York with this discussion, so we're really looking forward to it. So I wanna just explain a little bit the format of this evening. I'm going to introduce our first speaker and then after that, the three designers and I will have a discussion up here and we're gonna leave the last, say 15 or 20 minutes for questions from the audience. So please jot down questions. There'll be mics on either side so you can come up and share that with us. So what I'm going to do is the first designer and one thing I should add is that these designers in Jeremiah will probably go into a little bit more detail but each of these designers was chosen very specifically to come to this panel and they represent different areas of the Mari Meco team. So I will just briefly say what they're doing and then when they talk, they will give much more in-depth discussion about what they do at Mari Meco. So the first speaker is Jeremiah Tesselin and he has been working with Mari Meco since 2010. He is an industrial designer but his hat at Mari Meco is as a brand development manager and he's lived in Finland for the past or Helsinki for the last 12 years although he's originally from Canada. The first designer that's going to speak is Mika Pydenin and he represents the fashion design hat of Mari Meco and he's been with Mari Meco since 1994. The third speaker will be Sami Rutsalainen who has been working at Mari Meco since 2001 and he is involved in all the design, ceramic product design and glassware at Mari Meco. And last but not least is Aino Maia Metzela who is a printmaker. She might be the youngest of the three and she has been with Mari Meco since 2006. So without further delay, please welcome Jeremiah Tesselin. Thanks. Okay, Ter Rettuloa. That means welcome and finish. Thank you all for coming. It's been a great week in New York. We spent about a year building up this program and we really spent a lot of time tailoring the workshops to the different audiences with teens, design students, adults and families and we also spent a lot of time tailoring this talk as well and this talk has everything to do about the spirit of Mari Meco. So for Mari Meco, normally we wouldn't bring in three designers to give a talk. This is very special. So what you're gonna see tonight is something that a lot of people have never seen. It's like three very distinct sides of Mari Meco as one. So it's a kind of new way for us to do talks. It's a new way for us to do workshops. A bit about Mari Meco. So Mari Meco's been around for about 60 years. It's obviously founded in Finland. It's enjoyed a lot of international activity especially in the last five years. It had a very strong base in New York back in the 60s and 70s and it's now of course getting stronger all the time. The name Mari Meco is split in two parts. One part is the first name Mari. It's a Finnish girl's name and the second part is Meco which means dress in Finnish. So it's Mari's dress and that's how it kind of started it all. Mari Meco was founded in the early 50s. Finland was recovering from the war time. The country was very poor. There's only about five million people living in the country and there still is only about five million people living in the country, it's very small and people didn't have color. They didn't have patterns and there wasn't a lot of joy. So the company's founder, her husband had a textile company that was going bankrupt and she had a business idea that she would hire some artists to make some prints on the textiles and she would make dresses. There was no imports at that time. Everyone was wearing black and white and gray. So she had a fashion show and here's a photo from the fashion show and you can see at that time it was really joyful. It was all about kind of like really living even though it was really tough times. And this is a photo from one of the first dresses. You can see in the pattern the imperfection in a way the made by hand aspect in the pattern language and that's really characteristic of what Matamako does today as well. The pattern language is really made by hand all the way through even though we have a lot of different techniques and different materials that we use. That made by hand is really, really strong. So Matamako is, you know, we don't talk about brands so much. It's a company, it's a personality, it's a thing that people really, really enjoy. People often say they really like Matamako. Some people even say they love Matamako. So it's almost like kind of they have a really strong association with it if they know it. So some people describe Matamako as being very bold. It can be playful. It can be very expressive. And it can be iconic. So Jacqueline Kennedy bought six dresses as part of her husband's political campaign and she used them especially during leisure time. So for us as a company, I mean it's always been iconic women using Matamako in different situations. So what makes Matamako special? And this is something that, you know, we brought in Mika, Sami and Ainu Maya. They'll each talk about different parts about Matamako. Mika will talk about the, you know, it's not that he'll say one quote again. He'll say it's not the dress that makes a woman sexy. It's always the woman. So it's always about the person who buys Matamako, how they use it in their home, how they use it when they go out, how they use it during the, you know, Christmas holidays, these kind of things. This is the fascinating part. So the company, it's 60 years of history. It still makes colors and patterns, but we live differently. So life in New York is obviously different than in Tokyo or in Helsinki. So people buy and they use the prints and colors in different ways. So that's the fascinating part. And Matamako's for people of all ages. So we have the kids' lines. We have adults. We have, you know, for elderly people. It's for everyone across the world. And we have different lines. So we have the product lines that are, you know, always starting with the patterns in fabric and then hard products when it comes to ceramics and glass and other different lines. So it's always for use in the home. And then product lines for fashion when going out and bags and accessories. And all this comes together in different spaces. So our digital space, in terms of videos, what we talk about online, on Facebook, on a website, these kinds of things, the digital space, is where you find out more about Matamako and how it lives. And then physical space, we have a shop downtown at the Flatiron district. And that's a kind of movement of color and space. So you have different sort of sides of Matamako within one environment. So I'm gonna introduce Mika. Thank you. My name is Mika Piranen and I've been working in company since 1994. So I studied in the Lahti Design Institute and Ravensburg College in London. And my final collection was the Milkmaid. And Matamako people came to see the final collection show and they asked me to come to company visit. And I bring my portfolio and I met the main lady, Kirsi Bakkanen. And in between the interviews, she say like, you hired in the company. So I was like, ooh, this happened quickly. So in a way, I was in the right place in the right time. So I think it's all about the luck after all in the lives. So in next coming spring, I've been working company 20 years. And here you see my office in the Herto Niemi. It's full of stuff. I like to collect stuff and some archive pieces in there. And there's a little lion you can see there that takes care of the stuff. I could see if the lion is a little bit moved. Somebody's been in the office. So, and then also, I love little details. You see the patterns. I always keep these pattern things and buckles and things like I'm using in the collection. And it's a team work after all, especially the clothing. This is my pattern cutting lady, the blonde one, and she's from Lapland. And she comes to office only twice in a month. So we have to be really prepared when she comes. And here is the meetings we have. And here is my girl, our girl, her supporting actress. I'm not calling her as an assistant because it's much nicer. It's kind of acting what we're doing in a way. So that's the team. And otherwise, we talk a lot in the phone and it works really well because we know each other quite well. It's like we're like a married couple and we understand one word, what we mean, what we want. And here are some sketches. And then the inspiration. There's a little board in here. I love taking photos and traveling around. And also, I like the urban, like this is the festival, a flow festival in Helsinki and nice graphic things. And then nowadays, my parents are living in Lapland. So I like to visit there. This is just the photo autumn leaves. You have a beautiful autumn leaves also in here in New York. This is, I'm always observing people in the street and I love this one. This textile thing was really nice. It's really full on. It's just the roses, wrapped roses everywhere. And this, when I went to countryside and we went to get some eggs and I think this is perfect with the colorways. So these natural colors. And Helsinki in autumn colors. Again, I like to go this little island. I'm crazy about the autumn colors. So I'm happy in New York in this time. And this is the building all covered. And then nature does beautiful things. This is sort of the seaweed, what's been there years and years and dry. And I found this place this summer. I think it's amazing again. Kind of the same feeling with the roses. This is texture in here. And this I call Man in the Moon. This is the midnight sun we have in Finland. And the islands are amazing in Finland. If you have any chance to come to Finland, go to islands. And this is the printing factory, the colors. We are crazy about the colors. Then you can't have the flowers enough. More is more, I think with the flowers. And then I love bees and the honey. And I think this is sweet because I think the bees are having the winter sleep in here. And then we talk about the archives a lot in Marimekko. And we have these ladies, early 50s, they glue these things. And this front is from 1966, 1966. And don't you think this is so classical still and timeless? They could be so hip in New York nowadays, like the colors, all the hipsters would wear this. Straight away. Anyway, and then of course I work with the young designers like Ainomaia Metzola. So sometimes I like, we had to team up all about the flowers. And then we just say to Ainomaia, do some little flowers and that's what she did. And this is the one photo shoot we did in the Mailing Factory. I think this photo is quite beautiful. And then about the Opsies, what I do, I also do umbrellas. This is a great print from Katsui Wakisaka. We have lots of Japanese people around our company. This is from the 70s. So I made this umbrella. It could be like a snow storm or rain in here. Also the scarf. And then the dresses, I made a skirt and a shirt putting like a wise version when the women wear it. It's like the horizon you see from the islands. And then also the dress, it's good to be black in here and then happening more in the down. And then the hats, some classical prints. And we are crazy about the dots. We think the circle is the most happiest and friendly shape in the world. And it's selling well as well. I have to say this to everyone. And this is the one product I really like this print. It's from the out of space moon when man went in the moon in the 69. And sometimes we rework with the prints. So here you see the repeat how it was. So we take these little dots away and this is the result of what we did. And then I talk with the old people who used to do the prints, who got the copyrights. And it's a lot of work, even it's the archive prints. They're not ready just like that. And little prints are very nice. This is Birbut-Barbut from the 50s. And also this one is Papayo. It's almost from the backseat. I think it looks like a solid, but it's such a beautiful thing, such the quiet ones. So Marimekko is not all about the big, massive prints. It's all about also contrast, the styled ones. This is the raincoat with the same print with the black and white. And also this print, never seen a daylight. It was done in the 50s. I just see the little bees and then I thought, I like to bring this print back in life. And this was the old days when you were talking in a phone and you have nothing else to do the meanwhile with the sketching with Ben. This came that way. That's what I heard from Maya Isola. Also I do some solid clothes. So I like to have just the shape and that tells sort of architecture. And then we love stripes. We crazy about the stripes. There's the backs. And always Marimekko people thinks we own this stripe. So sometimes if somebody copied this, we think, no, this is Marimekko's stripe, but it's a little bit difficult thing. I also do my own prints. And this is what I did from the 97. And it was in the summer collection this summer. And this is very typical Marimekko as well. There's a positive and negative what we use. Black and white and white and black. And here you see the sizing. For the backs I use a little bit the smaller scale. Then I done my kits. I used to do the kits where as well, but now I'm retired. I think I'm done my kits. But here you see some examples what I did. And this is very typical Finnish girl in here with the Unikko. Maybe the most well-known print work we have. And this is Katsui Wakisakas Buupu, the cars. And Lorena, the dressing here. And then the stories. I used to be a lot of in in the photo shootings and I really like to do the whole setup at the very end. So this was the story. We went to shooting in Finland one lake, but it was so rainy for one week. So these girls stay on my home. I just had a little flat. And finally when we get to this summer place, the rain stop. And this was when the rain stop, we get this photo. And I think it's quite nice image. And it's already 13 years old, this image. So it's kind of timeless. And the same photos in here. The summer place, suddenly they got this everywhere the old Marameko prints, curtains. And we didn't know that once we get to the summer place. And here is the Mansekkavuotet, the print. It's called Strawberry Mountains. And in a Marameko, the people say like, you can't use this as a clothing. It's too big, so we scale it smaller. And all the time when the people, interior people use this, they put the strawberries on the right way. So now you see it, it's supposed to be that way. It's very smart, the thinking. This is the lens, classical print as well. This shooting we did in Estonia. And here you see the classical Estonia and wooden buildings. I think that was great, the background. And then I'll tell about this story a little bit. I made this Mustatamma, and all about the horses was to team the collection. And then I want to shoot in the studio and I rent a horse. And this lady, she's very good with the horses. She used the films and things like that. And this was the shot. After this shot, what were we done? The paper roll came down and the horses don't like anything that comes from the up. So he went completely mad. There was like, if I could use the word everywhere and all the lamps were like falling down. So it was very dramatic. And then I told my boss, I will have the photos of the horse. So we somehow made it some photos more and the horse eyes as you could see the scare of the thing. But this is the beautiful shot what we get. But after that was drama. And this is the shooting in the, again, the islands in Finland. And the water is quite freezing in early June. So I put this girl in the water and this boat was like almost under the water. But the photographer was so nice that he felt like they have to be like, he did the same thing. So we went, he went to the boat and the girl could take a photo of the photographer. So it's very democratic. So in Finland, we treat the women's quite well. Like, and this is the same girl in the studio. And again, this is the Ainomaia Metzola and mine, what we did together, Pärä, and the year was around 2008. And this I like because of the, again, you can see I use different materials. This is more light material in here. And then the Marimekko woman, as we say, the woman is sexy, not the dress. Remember this, this is quite easy. And I think this is a good example here. This is sort of artistic woman taking care. And over here you see the seal screens. This is taken in the Marimekko factory. Again, you can see this little quiet print. And this is the part of the weather diary, what Ainomaia and Sami is going to talk a lot. And we made raincoats because the rain is, after all, it's a happy thing, I think. And when you dress up with these happy colors and all this and you could enjoy the rain. Rain is not that bad, after all. Okay, thank you. Sami is next. Hi. My name is Sami Ruotsalainen. I've been working for Marimekko since 2001. I studied as a trainee there. When I was still studying the University of Art and Design Helsinki. And later on I worked as an assistant for many years for different designers. And then later on 2007 I studied as a full-time designer there. And nowadays I'm working as an in-house designer, mainly with shapes, different kind of shapes and materials. And now we'll talk a little bit about the way I work, about my inspiration, and then I'll show you a few nice cases about the design works. With this picture I wanted to start because there's a little story before I started in university. In my childhood we didn't have any Marimekko at home. Normally every Finnish home has Marimekko, but for some reason we didn't have. And then in the, it was almost high school times when I realized that there is this kind of company. And I decided that maybe one day I would do something and ask them if I could go there. And many, many years later I called them one day. It took half a year. Many phone calls. And then finally I was able to start there as a trainee. So nowadays I'm collecting lots of these fabrics and as you see this from my home this is just a little part of my dream from those times. I work in two different places. Daily I'm working in my studio in Hirtoniami. As you can see here there's plenty of stuff I'm working with. There's all kinds of things that I'm collecting on walls. Things happening. But then when I'm doing my real design work the place where I work is my own home. I'm working quite often at the nighttime not this light. But anyway there, I feel that in home there is all the things that I need for designing all the materials. There are all the inspirational things. I'm collecting lots of different kind of vintage ceramic and glass pieces, art. I'm reading lots of art books. So I need all the material there while I'm working. Here is a little, some pictures from my home. My sketchbooks. I'm working, normally I'm starting with lots of sketches. They are really tiny, like almost stamp size. And I have this bad habit of working with different books at the same time. So when I'm ready with the ideas I'm making more detailed sketches. One big thing for me when I'm starting to inspire myself and figuring out what to do next is I'm taking pictures all the time. Wherever I go I take pictures. And then I'm making more of those. Selecting the best ones. And here actually is the color map I did for spring 14. We were asked to bring three nice pictures in our meeting. This is my three nice pictures and three colors. So all the colors are there. Here you can see I'm traveling quite a lot, especially during the summer times in Italy. Finnish nature, islands in Finland. I'm photographing my friends. Different colors. Sometimes the pictures, the quality is not the thing for me. Sometimes it's only the color or the idea. So as you see here on these times I needed something green, something blue, pastels, black and white. This was really interesting when I finally found these pictures because these are taken in France, Italy, Finland and Germany. You can see here certain patterns going on like stripes and these kind of geometrical things going on. Then this is from my office. I'm working with lots of different materials, mainly paper, ceramics, textiles, product design. This is one case that I did a few years ago when company asked me to design a stationary line. We didn't have this kind of category before, so it was a completely new thing. It was really interesting to try to find the way to show Mari-Makka's shape and also the patterns. I'm not making patterns, I'm using someone else's patterns. So I had to think always how to use those in different products. Sometimes it's only a little detail. As you see here in the down corner, I'm using the colors, small details, stitching, colors of the stitching, there are plenty of things that I'm thinking then. In this case I wanted to use really classic Mari-Makka colors that we always have bright red, dark blue, yellow, and black and white. Sometimes it's all about prints like here. Details inner size of the envelopes. Or then like here, sometimes you need solid colors to make the collection somehow perfect and to combine different patterns together. This was a nice project I did with actually our first designer, fashion designer, Wokka Eskalini, Nurmes Niremi. We had only the book and the page of the book, in the beginning, as you see here. The colorway was there and then later on we did the whole collection with fabrics, ceramics. It was quite difficult because it's a wide stripes, so you had to think a lot when you put it in a small piece or in a small item, like a coffee cup or mug. And then we are doing a teamwork. I'm first sketching what I think would be the best and then the designer... Print designer comes to Hertoniemi and then we discuss together. Here is textile products I did with Maya Lourkari. I used her print. This really colorful tilku-tacki in my own products. I wanted to use it together with solid colors. There's lots of details, metal rings. The pillows are made with a quilt technique. Here are solid colors as well that I'm working in ceramics. This is my color palette normally. In ceramics the palette is quite small, but as you see here with the different combinations you can do lots of things. This picture I chose because it tells for me the whole soul of Marimekko. We want to bring people around the table together, enjoy life. There are all the things you need. There are textiles, clothing, dishes. It's like a big family around the table. This is taken in the 60s and the legendary owner of the Marimekko, Armerati, actually. It's the one in pink dress in the middle of the... or in the end of the table. This is the thing that I'm doing in my own design work as well. I think a lot of the people who I'm working with, the end users who are using my things, I'm spending my time in the same way. This is from last summer, mid-summer party. I asked my friends to come there and I made food for them because food has always been a big thing for me since I remember as a kid I wanted to be a baker or cook and later on I realized that maybe I would do something else because I was drawing all the time. In my work nowadays I can combine these two things. Making food is something that relaxes me. I get new ideas. I can test my own pieces. I'm taking lots of pictures with Marimekko fabrics. I'm drawing different ideas because I'm also styling the photographs and the interior shots. Wherever I'm going I'm normally having a piece of fabric with me and then I can test and try different things. Somehow it's about finding the beauty of everyday life and the small things that you can find there. This is from my home. I wanted to test my own items. Two bigger cases that I have done in Marimekko. The first design work that I did for Marimekko in 2008 I was asked to draw a new tableware set for them. Before that Marimekko has had ceramics since the 60s. Few items but not the whole tableware line. In a Marimekko way the brief was we would like to have something for eating and drinking, something for hot and cold drinks. Basically that's it. Then my boss was so nice. She gave me one picture, the big picture in the middle and said that this is all you need to see. This is the whole thing, what we want. I was like okay, it gets even nicer. Then I collected pictures from old Marimekko books like this is the mood board that I made then. The next step was that I started to measure. I'm doing that a lot. Sometimes annoying restaurants everywhere I go. I'm testing, drawing and making these little notes for myself. There's a little concept page that I did. The idea is there. Now you can see all the items about the measurements and volumes, detailed sketches about the idea. I'm always thinking what kind of food I would like to serve, how the things work with food, like the teapot, there's a really wide spout so you can see the tea running there really nicely. Here the end result, Oiva. Wide ceramics. Then after that the Maya Loca was asked to make her first print for these. This is her first sketches that she did. She was so happy because this was the first time she saw, or she was the first designer invited to do this kind of thing for new dishes. The first person actually who saw the prototypes, she was able to touch these, try these, check how they are, and then she was able to do what she wanted for these. This is her first idea for the pattern. Siirtola Puutarha. Some more pictures of the prototypes that we did. We worked these kind of paper curves to find the perfect solution for these. This is the end result. Really colorful together with the wide items. Oiva and Siirtola Puutarha are there together. Then one really nice picture. I really like this. I wasn't then styling these pictures, but I had to call immediately when I saw this stylist and tell that this is the way I planned it was supposed to be shot. I think that this tells the whole thing, it's a bit crazy, no one carries things like that, but I think that that's exactly how we do it. We are not doing like everyone else is doing, but in our own way. Then the second case, Finner, literally the biggest design work that I have done. I didn't know what was going on when the first time asked me to go to meet Finner people. We went there with our design team and they told that they like my ceramics that I have done before. Then later on I realized that there is a little bit something more coming as well. Like a plane. A few pictures about how we did outside of the plane. This is my rough idea for it, all the notes. Then I worked with the 3D model. I glued all the flowers there and later on the Isola family whose print this is, they came there and checked that everything is okay. And then after that, Finner people made a real or like sharp 3D model because you don't want to make mistakes with these kind of things. It had to happen at once. The schedule was also tight that we didn't have almost any days. I think that it was really like a few hours before it was supposed to leave from the place where they painted it and there was no place for mistakes. As you can imagine, one flower is four meters, it was quite a big job. Then I also did the inner side postlines for business class. My first sketches for the idea. And this is the variety of the materials and things we did for the plane. Menus, paper cups, textiles, the whole set. So there are many, many things happening and we had four different prints to work with at the same time. We wanted to bring somehow the really peaceful inner side for the plane. So it was not about prints, not about my designs, but the whole atmosphere. We had to create this peace of mind really peaceful environment for the people who are coming there because you don't really want to have that stress going on there. It has to be really peaceful and nice flight. People can rest and relax there. The ceramics and paper cups. The ceramics are for business class and then there are paper products for economy. Good old resting there, obviously really peaceful. We did really like light textiles that goes under the ceramics. The colors are really light gray and white. It's a perfect background for food. You can really see it, enjoy it. And later on when we bring the postlings there, it adds a pops of color there. One picture from the economy side. I'm really happy that they got the idea because we explained in the beginning that quite often only the business side is taken care of. But now we wanted to bring the whole plane the same feeling that someone had about them in every detail of design. And there's a boy sleeping under the really nice blanket there. Okay, and now it's Ainu Mai's turn. Thank you very much. Hello, my name is Ainu Mai and I'm a print designer and illustrator. I've been working for Marimek for almost eight years now. I started as a freelance designer and nowadays I work as an in-house designer. And I became a print designer almost by accident. So my background is in graphic design. But then I took part in a design competition organized by Marimekko. And I won one of the awards and Marimekko liked my print and took it in the collection. And that's how it all started. And nowadays I design prints for all kinds of products like fabrics, clothing, tableware, toys, stationery, bags and accessories. And this is my sketchbook. It's probably my most important tool. So I sketch a lot and process my ideas there. So usually I don't make mood boards. I carry my sketchbook with me wherever I go and make these small sketches and notes all the time. This is my studio. And I go there to paint and draw and do all the rest there. So I really like that I have my studio at home because I don't have to look at the clock there and I can work whenever I feel like it. And this is my dock. Sometimes when I'm feeling uninspired I take him out and try to clear my mind with that. It usually works really well. And I always draw and paint by hand. Watercolor is probably my favorite technique but I also like to experiment with all kinds of techniques because I kind of believe that you shouldn't get too comfortable with the tools because that way the working process stays more fresh somehow. So I use markers and crayons and paper cut sometimes, ink all kinds of stuff. And when I'm finished with the painting I go to this place this is my studio at Marimekko office so I go there and scan my paintings and then I make the repeat and all kinds of things like that to finish the design into an actual print and then I bring the print to the Marimekko artwork studio and they produce the final files for production and then I go and choose the colors. So I really like spending time with those drawers there's like hundreds of samples of colors and I just browse through them and try different shades and then I cut them and make the final colorways and then there on the background you can see a print and I'm next going to talk a little bit about that so this is my friend's daughter two years ago I spent I think it was two years ago I spent the mid-summer time with her and her family and she's in the pictures wearing some flowers on her head and this mid-summer celebration is quite important for things so people like to go to the countryside and spend time with their friends go swimming and go to the storm and things like that and there's this old tradition or story that's linked with mid-summer so according to this story if a young girl if she like picks I think it's seven flowers and puts them under her pillow during mid-summer nights she's supposed to see her future husband in his dreams but yeah I wouldn't recommend trying at least yeah my experience is that it doesn't work so well but I made this print that's kind of based on this story it's called Midsummer Magic Johannes Taika in Finnish and this is Rabbit that's running close to my home on this island and there's 800 people living there and there's more animals there than people so we have rabbits and frogs and sometimes we see foxes and all kinds of birds and mice things like that and I've noticed that the animals get really active in the evening so I like to take the dog out and observe the animals there and the dog chases after the rabbits and really loves that and then I made this print called Huhuli and you can see the animals there we don't have bears but the rest we have in Finland and during the summertime I like to go sailing so once I went to this island called Juramo it's quite far from mainland Finland and it's this really like raw nature there there's only like a lot of rocks and grass and only a few trees but there's a few people living there and I think it's one of the most beautiful places where I've ever been so based on these memories I made this print where you can see the different kind of different sizes of rocks there and then there's sketches for this interesting project that I did about two years ago when we opened a flagship store in New York so I designed this opening graphics for the store and the idea for the graphics was to illustrate the spirit of Marimekko and Marimekko coming to New York and I made these sketches that kind of were based on everyday life in New York but I actually hadn't been to New York ever so so maybe there are a few cliches there but I did some research so there's the staircases and cupcakes things like that okay good, yeah that's good to hear so these are the illustrations and here you can see them so it was quite a big big wall that we built kind of bringing this splash of color into the city and then we have had similar graphics in Boston also and this is from Helsinki and this is also from Helsinki but there's been those kind of things also in Australia and Sweden and other places where we've been opening stores after New York and I also make a lot of prints for clothing this is, I think this is actually one of my favorite prints for clothing that I made it's the print that Mika showed earlier it's called Kukka Meri which means like this sea of flowers I don't know if it translates so well and I really think it's quite interesting to design prints for clothing because clothes are so so personal for people so I think about what kind of people would wear the prints and what kind of colors they would like to have next to their skin and it's quite a personal thing for people and this is kind of maybe it's a garden by night and it's printed on silk which is really nice because the colors kind of pop out really well on silk so that's nice for me and in this print I kind of wanted to play with the placement of the prints so here kind of this line drawing emphasizes the waist and in different dresses that were made from the same fabric the line drawing is placed in different places so in one dress it's on the hem and in one shop I think it was around the shoulders so the personal designer can really play with that print which is nice and also in this print the flower pattern was kind of placed in the center and these lines were put there to kind of make it more peaceful and easier to wear and next time I'm going to talk about this project in a collection called the Weather Diary which was a collaboration with Samir Watzelainen and he designed the shapes for the products and I made the prints and the collection was inspired by weather and the four seasons in Finland and it was actually it started because we had about two years ago we had really interesting weather in Finland like strong storms that we don't usually have so often so all the design team was quite impressed and inspired by that and we started thinking that maybe we could create a collection around this theme and for me it was natural to start working on this idea kind of like I based the process for these personal things so I started collecting a lot of photos from my home island where I observed weather this is quite close to my home and the city centre in Helsinki is located like in the horizon there but it's quite close like a 15 minute ferry ride so it's not totally like isolated and I have a lot of these photos that kind of illustrate the feeling that I wanted to have in these products and I photograph different weather so this is a windy stormy weather and it's all grass that we have a lot in the island and this is the landscape that I see from my window it's a misty morning quite beautiful weather and there's some nice clouds there and you can see a small ship sailing to Sweden there in the horizon and then I started painting with watercolours I made piles of these sketches and paintings to work on I worked with watercolours and made these wets on wet technique and I also used some ink on the paintings so there you can see some different types of rains and grass grass with rain and wind more more of these more grass and this is kind of a small island that we have a lot close close to my home island where there's only grass growing there really nothing else but they are beautiful and when I finish the painting I started scanning them and trying them on different products so these are sketches for a plate for a plate and I like to play also with the white area on the plate because I don't want to hide the whole shape of the of the product so there's some white around illustration and here you can actually see the final plate and this is another one and then there's this smaller one for dessert it's this autumn colours that you have now here in New York we don't have that anymore it's like winter soon and there's a teapot with a small island there I added this sand afterwards in the picture and there's a cup of cup with a rainy landscape and mugs with grass and this serving pot there's this misty morning kind of a nice summer days it's about to come and here you can see all the tableware together so they were quite many products also there were posters this is a poster with this landscape landscape painting and there's here I put many of the original paintings together into a poster and this is a storm storm with rain kind of thunder feeling here and then we had three fabrics this is a linen fabric called Harmaja it's actually a name of a lighthouse island close to Helsinki so I named these fabrics after islands in Finnish archipelago and this is a print called Jussaro it's been printed on cotton and it's kind of this really strong heavy rain and dark skies there this is Kuuskajaskariin that's maybe one of my favourite products in the collections because it really reminds me of my home island it looks quite a lot like that in the autumn time personally I think it's quite nice if and important for me that if the inspiration for the products is somehow personal and close close to you because somehow I believe that also people will connect to the products more easily and because maybe they can sense that there's these emotions behind the products thank you well I can say I feel deprived I did not have Mari Mekko in my house when I was growing up how many did you all have Mari Mekko well I know Sami I completely share the size with you but did you have Mari Mekko in your house yes we did there's a photo when I was four years old and there's a birthday cake and I'm just blowing that there's this poppy with the green army this sort of 70s colourway and I was having an even stripe so that's quite full on Mari Mekko so my my parents were a bit hippy they liked this sort of in the 70s the house the kitchen was red bedroom was all about the brown and white living room was everything that was 70s, that was normal that's great and what about you Anamaya yeah we had a lot of Mari Mekko curtains at our home and also my grandparents had them a lot I remember my mother were a lot of Mari Mekko dresses and I even remember that there was one dress that she had this like adult size and I had this mini size of the same so that's quite cute now I had the adult size nowadays I got it from my mother because she doesn't fit in any more well I feel I discovered Mari Mekko later in the later 70s when I visited DR which was our kind of the place to see Mari Mekko in Cambridge in Boston area and so I remember going into that store and just being totally overwhelmed and also my grandmother had a Mari Mekko tablecloth and I think that was the the only instance that I really and it really had a very you know very strong memory in my mind about Mari Mekko so anyway I just was curious because I felt sorry for Sami that didn't grow up with it but I wanted to talk about the hands and this is a series about the hand and Sami you you showed your sketchbooks and I was very interested in how you I was reading a little bit about you in the pattern book where it talked about each of you as designers for Mari Mekko and how you and you mentioned it in your talk about going around and measuring all different types of glasses and ceramics and how do you finally kind of come up with the perfect measurement from all those studies did you you had lots of them and you had lots of numbers but how did you ultimately decide on what would be the best oh god there is like right or wrong way to do it it's a weird ongoing process that I'm doing all the time the notes work for me as kind of a notepad so whenever I find something nice I feel maybe a handle which feels nice or something I make a little note or drawing or idea or take a photo just to remind me later how it felt that day what was really nice in this case is that normally quite often the companies are giving strict numbers like there has to be a plate which is 24 cm 26 cm and so on in this case I was given free hands to do what I wanted I first tried to do with the normal way because I know from the I've been working with different companies as well so I know the background and how it should be but then of all the papers like from the beginning from the feeling like now I have an empty table and I can do what I want and I had to find my own maramico size that fits really well but did you have this goes for all of you in terms of the steps because you talked about the inspiration which was fantastic I don't know what you would do well I'm sure you would think of something but if you weren't in Finland because the nature and just all of that was really important to how you work and what you ultimately design but I'm curious after that inspiration where does the hand come in you sketch you know where in terms of the production of the actual pieces like for the ceramic, the glass for the textiles, for the fashion where else does the hand come into it and I'm sure there's lots of different ways you could still be using the computer and still the hand is important but I'm curious do you have prototypes, do you make models by hand do you use clay for some of the three dimensional objects where does the hand come in in other ways besides your sketchbooks like in Helsinki we have the the ladies who do the samples the soreness and it's nice it's all around it's quite unusual nowadays you could do the first samples in there so then we are of course we go when they cut the prints on the table we go there and help and watch what they're doing even when we cut them sometimes we're there that's actually the favorite place in the factory and is this right near where your studio is and yeah it's in Hertonium everything is in there so that's quite hand for me also we have the printing factory in Hertonium in Helsinki and there there's like in the first steps of the printing process there's a lot of this hand work so like the screens are kind of this many things that the screen makers do by hand and also the first samples of the fabrics are always printed by hand like a hand printing table I don't know like the old days they do it by hand yeah the few meters by hand and then it's more mechanized different colorways during that process it's all done by hand and in terms of like I mean what's interesting too is you're all working in different media I sort of thought it was like you know three dimensional and you're in strictly fashion but you're all kind of crossing each other's areas which I think is really it's unusual I think and you usually get sort of pegged in specific departments but that's not the case and so how often do you collaborate and how often do you actually inspire one another or influence one another and what you do you mentioned a couple of collaborations but I don't even know how many designers there are at Marimekko there's quite many nowadays because there are freelancers and then there are few in-house designers but many of them are freelancers who collaborate with Marimekko once in a while and some are there all the time even though they are freelancers so they work really closely with the company so are you doing a lot of collaborations together I mean I know you have the wonderful sort of studios in your homes and then you have a studio at Marimekko but how often do you kind of meet up and sort of work on projects together I think that it depends on the project that we are doing for example Mika I think that whenever you need prints you start with and there's a need as you see all the time I need the prints non-stop it's just like Mika kind of prints him he needs and there's a lot of kind of discussions, open discussion about what we should do next Anomai is wearing the dress what is in the autumn collection and again I order the flowers I can't, I like flowers after all and like in this weather diary collection that we did together with Anomai in the beginning especially we talk a lot about the feeling Anomai was asking what kind of things she should think when she's drawing new patterns for those so I was able to tell about the details that are really meaningful for me in the pieces we discussed a lot about the balance between print and object and like Anomai mentioned that she would like to or she wanted to have white there in the patterns as well so piece but to somehow find the balance that the shape and pattern gets something from each other and co-write or find the perfect balance there So that process took about one year when we made the weather diary and we met a lot like maybe once in a week or once in two weeks and we talked about this so it's really a teamwork so then you come up like say for tableware would you come up with the design of the tableware and then work with Anomai she would work on the pattern to kind of mesh with that tableware or does the pattern come first because I know sometimes like in your work the pattern comes first which I think is interesting in fashion because usually it's all about the silhouette or the drape but here it's like it's so different because it's all about the pattern sort of designing in relation to the pattern so it's interesting I always start with the pattern it's like I want to have the mood what I'm feeling and what is good for the team and after that I'm thinking like what sort of material would come nicely is it silk or linen or jersey or woven and after that I do the sketches so it's much more easier that way kind of like you're not wasting time as well so it's like and it's quite unusual I think the fashion designers usually they start the sketching or sort of materials but I think the material is very important as well and like with this case with the weather diary there wasn't even most of the items were there when Anomai started but the latest additions that we did we only had this funny cut it kind of a like silhouette picture of the jug and she was trying to figure out how it goes and I had the measurement for the diameter I was able to tell the diameter and then show the silhouette for her and she had to imagine in her mind how it looked like because we didn't get the samples early enough from the factory so I used to work with when I was still studying I did all my prototypes myself to get the idea really clear but nowadays I feel that I can still remember those moments and I can read only pictures so I don't need those 3D models anymore I'm sometimes using only paper to get the measurements or to make little samples but I'm not making my own prototypes anymore the company is doing and it's a collaboration with them ideas sometimes really rough sketch and then they can do their own part this company has been around 60 years and really very strong there have been very few moments where it's really kind of ebbed it's been a strong presence and as young designers how has that been with a company with such a strong legacy and you as wanting to kind of have your own individual expression how does that mesh together has it been difficult, have you struggled or if you feel that you're very sympatico with we obviously are they wouldn't have hired you but still you must have your own individual urges so how does that how do you make that work how do you not compromise yourself I guess well, yeah people ask that quite often and I think I don't think about it so much like I'm just doing my own work and of course it's really interesting to have this really long history and I really appreciate it but I think it's maybe too confusing if you start thinking it's too much and I think Marimekko chooses designers whose style and like personal, original way of making making things they like so so they don't like to like put them into this box and try to make them look like Marimekko they choose designers who they think look like Marimekko and of course it's like a roller coaster sometimes and it's like a sea I always say like it's sometimes wavy and stormy and sometimes it's very calm but, yeah no it's very timeless well I'm going to open up to the audience in one minute I have one other question because it's very much on my mind in terms of the whole idea of digital technology and do you think that has changed in terms of how you work with your hands or your own sort of creative process at Marimekko or you know how does it is it still balanced do you think or do you think it should be more hand, more digital I think I'm Mr. Old School I think everything should be by hand definitely and that's the part of the Marimekko the history and the whole thing and I think all of us we are like we're doing lots of it but of course there's this role in digital technology so when the files are produced for the printing machines and there's lot of these things that you like the professionals at the hardware studio do digital technology screen printing and everything it's digitalized but nowadays it's really good and the results are good and the quality is stays in a certain level we have done some few things with digital digitally printed fabrics but it's not so common only a couple of times but screen printing is anyway the main thing for us but we like to try different things also because it's interesting to see how large these designs are with digital technology you can make no repeat so but maybe that's not good for Marimekko because you have repeats all the time but anyway I'm going to throw it open to the audience and if you please could come up to the microphone so it can get caught on we're live streaming this so if you have any questions if not I have lots more I can ask yes if you could speak into the microphone thank you very much for this incredible presentation you spoke about inspiration from nature and I can't think of any greater inspiration I also talked about the origins of Marimekko that it started at a time of difficulty in the world and introduced color I was just wondering how world events come into do world events come into play in design now how you relate or do you relate to what's happening in the world or are there trends that affect your choices or are you able, are you mainly your individual contribution does that make sense I think we, the artists we are very sensitive we could like have the introduction of what's happening in the world and I think we use that a lot in the nature of course for me it's the main thing and the trends I think we try to avoid the trends it's the color they say that brown is the new black we try to avoid that for that season so it's funny the trend if you see this trend offices that comes and they try to offer why don't you buy us our trend books and then you go through them and there's so many photos of Marimekko why the hell we buying this it's us what we buying in there you understand what I mean I don't know if this was the right answer for this it was perfect yeah I think it's just much more sustainable to make things that are timeless so that's what we are mostly trying to do it's very difficult to date your designs flipping through there was the Bard Graduate Center exhibition on Marimekko and then this recent patterns book that I saw and it's when you flip through you cannot tell which was done in the 60's which was done in the 90's there is a timelessness which I know seems to try but there truly is any other questions from the audience excuse me I can't reach the mic oh okay thank you I'm just curious about the relationship between Marimekko and the designers my impression is that they give you a lot of freedom I don't know how accurate that is but it seems like at least you are able to work a lot in your home studios and then the other thing I found interesting was one person mentioned that a designer owned a copyright and so I was wondering does the company own any copyrights or do the individual designers actually own the copyrights yes we share it it's both the designer has it and Marimekko has it somehow but then also when I used the old brains from the archives and maybe the artist itself is dead so I will call the daughters or the sons and I say if it's alright I use that one and I kindly asked them to come in the factory to watch what we're doing and it's very emotional these people get very emotional they're very happy with what we're doing I haven't had a single thing they say like no you can't use this it's sort of they bring alive back this person they come in but these sort of things we are very strict like we don't use anything these kind of copyrights we are especially me I'm always taking care of that can you pass the microphone to okay great I was just wondering about the materials that you use and I think originally it was cotton and linen and now in the modern world we have blends and it's kind of important to have stretchy things in the world how do you feel about going this way which would add a different dimension we've been doing like a jersey with the stretch for quite a long time and because we are not printing all the prints in Marimekko factory we are doing a lot in Italy there's a company called Mantero and they're specialized with very good modern fabrics and wool wool jersey if you look like the I know my stress as well it's with the nice grep stretch fabric those are materials for clothing but in interior fabrics we use mostly cotton linen and even velvet sometimes but it's some lighter cotton also sometimes and then depending about the product there's wool and what else we're trying anyway in this world now since we know all how the environmental things are issue and we never know what happens to the cotton later so of course we think a lot about the different materials that we could maybe use in the future and we are trying but nowadays it's mostly cotton is anyway the soul somehow with the company any any other questions I've always thought of Marimekko for the prints and the fashion I didn't realize how much of the product design was actually done in house such as the ceramics in the tableware is all of the products that you see Marimekko all done in house or are the prints ever licensed out to other kinds of product companies nowadays almost there might be some like some really iconic simple things like wooden trays or something where we use these old simple designs but actually nowadays we are going towards the way that we have our own designs and that's why I'm also working there and it's really nice that to think all the time since we have had prints and prints always that what kind of shape Marimekko is and that's the way how we want to do it nowadays any other questions yes I actually don't have a question but I do want to tell you that ever since I started Marimekko in the 70's I have had duvet's and the prints of Marimekko and sheets in Marimekko and I always go to bed happy was there another question okay so I also love Marimekko but I was wondering how you feel about like Ikea making cheaper versions of basically your designs next question of course it's also a compliment but it's not nice but something interesting okay next question you all had some beautiful photography and illustration reference images do any of you maintain blogs or anything like that tumblers of that type of stuff anywhere where we can look Instagram yeah Instagram I love because so Instagram yeah okay sorry go ahead I don't have any yeah I have my portfolio but there's Facebook? are you on Facebook? no I'm more Instagram it's more about the visuals yeah it's like you don't have to buy magazines anymore because if you have following many people interesting people you see every day it's very wide opening eye opening like what's going on I think the magazines are so yesterday we should stop with the magazines we don't need them anymore don't tell the publishers even I'm old school I like reading them on the subway I mean it's take the ferry I take the subway one last question I just want to say thanks for the great presentation and also because my question was because the fashion industry has become such a large part of the global market it's unusual that a company is so small or contained I should say and not subject to outside kind of owners or other market forces does that change the way you guys design being that you're not owned by another larger holding company well it probably depends on each director or CEO of the company have they given you creative freedom to do what you want have you ever felt I know some of you haven't been there that long but have you ever felt constrained by freedom of expression there in terms of your work well of course there are better days and worse days but mostly we have a lot of freedom mostly we have a lot of freedom but of course there are days you feel like you have to do the compromise but that's the design world you have to do compromises you can't feel like so full on then you're an artist then you just work as an artist you understand what I mean you don't work for a company after all we are like industrial designers yeah we are designers not artists and it's somehow something that we have learned to do also think about certain things and no so do you compromise I think that's why the Marimekos Jusas it's in our blood this sort of yeah we make happy compromises as the Mr. Swiss says well I know we could talk on and on but thank you very very much Mika and Sami and Anomaya for your great presentations and Jeremiah for yours and we hope you come back soon and look forward to the next decade two decades of Marimekos I can't wait to see what you're going to come up with so thank you very much