By Pälvi Myllylä

(Editor’s note: This essay appeared as a blog post on the site of the Finnish magazine Antiikki & Design, and is printed here with permission of the author. Translated by Pirjo Heikkilä.)

Sunset. The glow of lilacs. Red berries of rowan. Midsummer yellow sun. A field landscape. A mist over the lake. Nature has always been the inspiration for Finnish raanus. It can sometimes be hard to remember, as most of the raanus date back to the 1970s, when the use of colors was by no means passive. 

A raanu is a type of simple woven textile, first used as blankets and later as wall textiles. Raanus rose to popularity in the 1970s, when a wildly colorful fashion prevailed in Finnish interiors. The raanu fit like a nose to the head. [Editor’s note: This is a Finnish idiom – something that is a perfect match fits like a nose to the head.]  The tobacco-brown and pine-green walls were joined by the most imaginative raanu color schemes. But over the generations, raanus moved from the walls to the darkest attics and corners of the linen closet. They are rarely found in modern interiors.

Raanus have always been in the life and family of the artist Elina Juopperi. The artist became enthusiastic about exploring the natural subjects that inspired the raanu and started photographing “raanu-like” subjects – even wild colors could be found directly in nature, if you only knew how to look properly. Eventually every landscape begins to look like a raanu.

While implementing her series, Elina Juopperi noticed that people were happily giving up their raanus; flea markets and recycling centers were full of them. Juopperi started to collect raanus to implement a new, amazing contemporary art project. She used raanus to reproduce the iconic “Die” sculpture of sculptor Tony Smith from 1962. The sculpture is a cube with dimensions borrowed from Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man drawing: each side is 180 cm (approximately 6 feet) wide.

In her speeches and works, Elina Juopperi equates the traditional raanu with modern minimalist art: the clear color fields and rhythmic design language are like textbook minimalism. For some reason, the color choices and clear color fields that seem natural in painting feel foreign to modern viewers when seen in textiles.

Individuals donated raanus to Juopperi’s work: In Valkeakoski, almost 30 were donated. The names of donors were noted alongside the art work. The raanus remained intact, meaning they were not chopped or processed in any way. So Juopperi’s work is the best way to preserve raanu heritage for future generations in the form of a work of art!

The title of Elina Juopperi’s piece Perintö (Heritage) essentially tells what the piece is about – tradition and heritage. Textiles often carry stories and significant emotional value.  Juopperi received several donations at the Visavuori museum, for example, in which the couple gave up their wedding gift. In the Heritage piece, the raanu continues their life and story, and remains on display – unlike in many homes, where the raanus are rolled into the darkest corner of a storage closet.

The  craze came to an end in the 1980s, and in the 1990s no one was actually making them anymore. It’s a pity, because it would have been interesting to see what colors and designs would have been used in raanu as fashion changed. You can already see a clear change in the color schemes in raanus from the 1980s, with pastels and softer colors taking over.

I confess: I myself have not cared much about raanus. Admittedly, there are many special memories associated with them. My mother wove them in the hall of Taivalkoski Citizens’ College in the 1970s, in the house next to the church and the town hall. They are nicely done, but have not made their way to the walls of any of her children.

As I got to know the ideology of Elina Juopperi’s work, I really started to look at both raanus and the world around me with completely different eyes: now I look out the window and realize that every landscape has changed to look like a raanu. Looking at raanus as minimalist art, on the other hand, has given us the tools to look at the brightly colored surfaces in a different way – they seem to fall into place and not argue with each other.

The work Heritage also gives us reason to think about the formation of history, because when the textiles are stacked, it is as if layers of earth are formed. Each layer is unique and tells its own story – the story of a person, family or even a village may be embedded in each layer of soil. And at the same time, each unique raanu becomes part of a unified whole, revealing only a small part of itself and serving the whole as the sum of one small part.

I am hugely glad that in Finnish heritage our historical strata are mainly light red, orange and yellow–not brown, black and gloomy.

Pälvi Myllylä, October 4, 2016

Pälvi Myllylä is the director of Visavuori museum in Valkeakoski, Finland. She has a Master of Science in Art history  from Jyväskylä University. She is a journalist and art critic for the publications Etelä-Suomen Sanomat and Antiikki & Design, and has written about Finnish artists including cartoonist Kari Suomalainen, sculptor Emil Wikström, Olga Gummerus-Ehrström and Eric O.W. Ehrström. She is interested in various textile and handicraft techniques in art, and enjoys exploring handcraft techniques herself.  

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