He was the owner of the moonlight on the ground, he fell in love with the most beautiful of the trees, he made wreaths of leaves and hung them around his neck.
Tales from Moominvalley
In Klovharun, a small rocky island where Tove Jansson and her partner Tuulikki Pietilä spent their summers for close to 30 years, Tove was a familiar sight with blooming flowers in her hair.
During her productive career, Tove also drew many unique wreaths for her books and other illustration works. A draft cover of the Finn Family Moomintroll (image below), for example, ended up being used by the Finnish postal service in their envelopes in the 1990s. Many of the wreaths have also been used in modern Moomin products – can you spot them?
Do you recognise which popular Moomin product the delicate, blue letter illustration below – originally used in a Finnish postal letter – has been used in?
Between 1990-1994 Moomin Arabia produced children’s tableware sets with one of Tove’s wreath drawings. Moomin Arabia’s now-retired ceramic illustrator Tove Slotte modified the original picture for the plate and chose the coloring for the design. “I wanted to have more of the main characters for the plate design, so I removed the bat, fish, the Joxter, girl and the snake, and replaced them by Snufkin, Snorkmaiden and Moominpappa”, Slotte explains.
The image below is one of the first models of the plate for the children’s set and Tove Jansson herself asked Slotte to change the coloring of the Gaffsie’s flowers and Salome’s dress. The plate that was produced in the end features Gaffsie and Salome with lighter dresses. Some of these test versions, however, ended up on sale – maybe you have this kind of rarity in your Moomin collection?
The images below are of two wreath drawings with unknown origins.
