Style combination · Contrasts

Finnish Bold Print × NK Textilkammare Geometric Print

Marimekko enlarges one hand-cut or brushed motif to a huge repeat with a deliberately wobbly edge; NK's geometric strand keeps small, ruled units on a black-and-white base. Set one against the other to show scale against restraint.

From the research on NK Textilkammare Geometric Print (Astrid Sampe, Signerad Textil)

Mix them and make something Finnish Bold Print NK Textilkammare Geometric Print

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from NK Textilkammare Geometric Print, their arrangement from Finnish Bold Print, the finish from Finnish Bold Print. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Finnish Bold Print (Marimekko Modernism) NK Textilkammare Geometric Print (Astrid Sampe, Signerad Textil)

Type from Finnish Bold Print
Colour from NK Textilkammare Geometric Print: Monochrome
Limited spot colours
Form from NK Textilkammare Geometric Print: Rectilinear
Non-representational
Composition from Finnish Bold Print: All-over field
Repetition & rhythm
Surface from Finnish Bold Print: Painterly brushwork
Flat

NK Textilkammare Geometric Print avoids painterly brushwork: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Finnish Bold Print

Order

Inter Tight; Finnish Bold Print used The Marimekko wordmark (in use since 1954) and Selvedge inscriptions repeated along the edge of the cloth, naming designer, pattern, maker, country and year

Text · NK Textilkammare Geometric Print

The reduced, geometric household textiles of NK's textile department in Stockholm under Astrid Sampe: small ruled units, stripes, checks, arrows and thin outlines repeated evenly, mostly on screen-printed linen and cotton, some on woven linen, in black and white with a few flat accents of red, blue or yellow. Sampe's late-1940s fabrics followed Mondrian; the 1954 Signerad Textil collection put artists' names, Aalto's among them, on industrially printed cloth. Quiet, rational cloth with no focal point and no type in the repeat.

Jost; NK Textilkammare Geometric Print used No lettering in the repeat and The printed selvedge mark naming maker, pattern and designer in capitals, such as 'TEXTILKAMMARE MADE IN SWEDEN "14/6" ALVAR AALTO DESIGN' on Aalto's 14/6 (MFA Boston 2012.847)

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from NK Textilkammare Geometric Print, with a counter-accent from Finnish Bold Print. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Finnish Bold Print (Marimekko Modernism) NK Textilkammare Geometric Print (Astrid Sampe, Signerad Textil)

#f2eee4 ground · 36%
#161616 ink · 14%
#e5b51f accent · 18%
#ef7d1a accent · 14%
#c62a20 accent · 10%
#1f4f9a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f2eee4;
  --ink: #161616;
  --accent-1: #e5b51f;
  --accent-2: #ef7d1a;
  --accent-3: #c62a20;
  --accent-4: #1f4f9a;
  --font-display: "Inter Tight", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Jost", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Finnish Bold Print (Marimekko Modernism): Many of the best-known patterns, Unikko and Kivet among them, are still produced by Marimekko and remain protected designs, so work in the manner rather than copying them. Folk sources carry two further, separate risks. Anonymous folk ornament can be living devotional material: the käspaikka, the Karelian linen towel named in Isola's 1959 print, is still used to dress icons in Orthodox churches and homes, so abstract such ornament rather than quote it, and keep it out of contexts that trivialise it. A named folk artist's work is authored, not a shared tradition: in 2013 Kristina Isola admitted that her 'Metsänväki' (2007), by then painted on a Finnair aircraft, copied elements of Maria Prymachenko's 1963 painting 'Rat on a Journey'; Finnair undertook to repaint the plane and Marimekko ended its collaboration with Kristina Isola in September 2013.