Meet Svenskt Tenn's favourite paper artist – and discover her bespoke holiday bouquet for Vogue Scandinavia

Sofia Vusir Jansson’s flower arrangements live forever. Crafted entirely of paper, the Swedish artist’s works look astonishingly similar to the real thing – minus the scent, of course. “The driving force when I create flowers is a kind of search for something irregular, something that’s odd without taking away the aesthetically pleasing and the beautiful,” says Vusir Jansson, who brought this approach to the special holiday bouquet made exclusively for these pages. “I want them to generate emotions; there should be movement, something surprising, something that is not perfect. I love the crooked, the unexpected and the fearless.”

Although 52-year-old Vusir Jansson has “worked with my hands and with creative stuff all my life”, her foray into paper flowers was somewhat unanticipated. Having started as a hairdresser, the artist later pivoted to photography. In 2015, she was booked for a shoot requiring a large flower. Being a crafty person, Vusir Jansson decided to make it herself. “I made that flower from tissue paper and got some inspiration from my garden,” she says. To her surprise, the floral creation quickly garnered attention and soon requests for more paper flowers came rolling in.

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For a couple of years, Vusir Jansson juggled different jobs in photography, styling and creating her paper blooms, which, at the time, were popular decor for theatre sets. But in 2020, she received the biggest request so far: the iconic Swedish design house Svenskt Tenn commissioned her to produce paper flower Christmas tree ornaments. Unbeknownst to many, self-made paper flowers are the oldest festive tree decorations in Sweden, and via Vusir Jansson’s work, Svenskt Tenn brought back a cherished holiday tradition.

“It was really difficult, but at the same time super fun to do them,” Vusir Jansson says of the collaboration. The project also holds a deeply personal meaning to the artist, whose father died suddenly shortly after the ornaments were released. “He worked on the flowers with me a lot, folding them by hand together with me,” Vusir Jansson says. The ornaments proved a massive success – so much so that Svenskt Tenn reached out to her the following year. “I was really depressed and it wasn’t a good time at all, but somehow I said yes,” Vusir Jansson says. Turned out, hand-crafting 15,000 festive paper flowers helped her deal with the grief of losing her father, and made her fall in love with her craft even harder.

Today, Vusir Jansson still collaborates with Svenskt Tenn while creating striking paper flower arrangements for events and exhibitions. The artist has also added hugely popular paper flower workshops to her roster, where she wishes to instil in her students the same passion she discovered during a rough time. “I hope I can help other people find their craft because it’s good for the brain as well – not just the beauty of it. It’s much more,” she says.

With her paper flowers gracing the pages of Vogue for the very first time, Vusir Jansson set out to craft a special bouquet that exudes the joy and magic of the holiday season. In addition to the classic festive reds and greens, she wanted to add tones of icy blues and whites that remind us of Stockholm’s snowy winter days. Elsewhere in the arrangement, bright yellows represent stars against a dark midnight sky. As for the type of flora, she opted to “get closer to reality, but still with a highly surreal feeling, for example in the anemones that are twice the size of real ones”. You can also spot cold weather blooms that the artist has envisioned herself, aptly named Starfall, Rimfrost (Hoar Frost), Polka (Polka Candy) and Bjällra (Bell).

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Bursting with vibrant hues and fantastical blooms, Vusir Jansson’s paper flower arrangements take their cues from the creative’s love for history and folklore. “For me, folk art is friendly and permissive – there is so much emotion involved and the hand is really allowed to leave its mark,” she says. She also finds inspiration in the Nordic greats of the past, naming prominent women such as Tove Jansson, Selma Lagerlöf and Hilma af Klint amongst her most major influences. “The stories surrounding them, their roles, thoughts and how they lived are almost an obsession for me,” she says.

Vusir Jansson mainly works with crepe paper, always painting the details and shadows on the flowers herself while ensuring all leftover material is either reused or recycled. Her primary tool is her hands. “With my hands, I cup leaves, bend, spin and crinkle the paper to get an organic shape – the paper is twisted, pressed and folded,” she says. Scissors cut and bend the paper and a self-made metallic and wooden tool aids in the shaping process. Finally, she uses book-binder glue and sewing by hand to bring the bouquet together.

The enchanting arrangement gets the finishing touch with a lustrous forest green Dagg vase by Carina Seth Andersson for Svenskt Tenn. “I think what’s the absolute best thing about paper f lowers,” Vusir Jansson says, “is that anything is possible.”