Print power: How Maija Isola grew Marimekko into a cult brand

In post-war Finland, amid an established uniform of muted greys, Armi Ratia founded a company that would redefine the Finnish aesthetic. Making printed oilcloth coats, Ratia, armed with a bright-eyed idealism, set out to find like-minded emerging artists; young women, specifically, who would spearhead a colourful revolution by putting their creativity on blank canvas. She called her brand Marimekko.

Among these artists was Maija Isola, who at 22 joined the early ranks of printmakers at Printex, a textile printing company (and Marimekko’s predecessor) founded by Ratia’s husband Viljo Ratia, in 1949. At the time, Marimekko was a start-up operating on a shoestring budget – an environment which allowed for ample experimentation. It was graphic design, not classical art, that drove these printmakers, as Ratia told a journalist in 1972: “A hint of Matisse and a suggestion of Slavic folk art.”

Breaking free from the confines of pre-war artistry and drawing inspiration from the likes of Austrian-born ‘father of Swedish Modernism’ Josef Frank, Marimekko’s print designers worked within a modern palette of primary colours, often to electrifying effect. The brilliant hues punched through the bleak outlook in the country at the time.

It was in this environment that Isola’s artistic expression flourished. “Maija Isola’s designs are the ones which are the most
recognisable Marimekko style. They are often bold, large scale and bright colour patterns,” says Harry Kivilinna, an exhibition curator at Design Museum Helsinki, who has worked with Maija Isola’s material for several exhibitions and contributed to the book Maija Isola, which was published in 2005. Isola’s brushstrokes spoke to the times, her work bridging the literal and the abstract.

“Even today, younger designers follow that path in Marimekko,” notes Kivilinna. At Marimekko, each print is treated like art rather than pattern, with the design named and the artist credited. When the brand gained international acclaim in the 1960s, Isola’s patterns were often put on display. “Her work was the complete opposite of what was expected from a Nordic textile company,” says Kivilinna. “They are very rarely minimalistic or quiet. In this sense, they brought a totally different level to Nordic design.”

One example is Isola’s Unikko print – the poppy petals printed in punchy colours that have become emblematic of the design company, functioning like an unofficial logo. “Unikko has become almost its own brand in Marimekko,” says Kivilinna. “It has been in production since 1964, but it has never been as popular as in the 2000s.” Today, Isola’s patterns are widely used in Marimekko’s clothes, but that was not always the case. “All of her patterns were interior textiles; the use of them as clothing material started in 2001,” says Kivilinna, “when old printing models were adapted in different scales for clothes.” In fact, the now iconic Unikko print dress only came to be in 2003.

When Unikko was first designed in 1964, the print was an act of rebellion. “Unikko was born as part of the ‘Forbidden Florals’ series,” explains Minna Kemell-Kutvonen, design director for home and print design at Marimekko. Blooms were initially banned from Marimekko, with Ratia stating that only nature could create something as beautiful as flowers. Isola went against this edict as she “wanted to be in charge of her own creativity,” according to Kemell-Kutvonen, who adds that, “She designed a full series of flower-only prints in her distinct style.”

Raita gradually conceded to liking floral prints, and Marimekko has included florals in every collection since, with several of Isola’s floral prints becoming de facto parts of Marimekko’s design language. Four screens are required when printing the poppy design in its classic Unikko colourway. First, dark navy stems are emblazoned on the canvas, followed by the large red petals, the smaller pink ones, and finally, the orange centres, which all overlap to create the design’s unique depth. Today, the process is mechanised, with yard upon yard of wrinkle-free cotton carefully pressed and fed through the rotary screen printing machine.

Since its conception in 1964, the Unikko print has shifted and changed, its chameleon-like qualities helping it adapt to each new Marimekko era. In fact, the poppy print has been reinterpreted by three generations of Isolas, with both Maija’s daughter Kristina and her granddaughter Emma remixing the original. For Marimekko’s 70th anniversary in 2021, Emma took the Unikko print and applied her own marbleised technique, creating swirling blue petals shifting from navy to bone white.

Trying to summarise Isola’s work, her 38-year-long tenure at Marimekko and more than 500 designs, can be daunting. After joining Marimekko as a freelancer, Isola made a collection of patterns almost every year between 1949-1987 (excluding three years in the 1950s). Her work covers an astoundingly diverse range of motifs and design techniques, drawing inspiration from traditional folk art and modern visuals, from nature and from her countless trips around the world. “Maija travelled and loved being a wanderer, and that’s what she did for most of her active artist life,” says Kemmel-Kutvonen.

The current design director points out that Isola “utilised the everyday moments as material for her art”. “She always required a sofa in her office, and that was one of the reasons why she preferred to work from her own studio rather than Marimekko,” she says. “Armi refused to give Maija a sofa for her office.” Photos of Isola rarely capture her sitting at a desk or standing by an easel, instead sitting on the floor, legs crossed and brows furrowed. In this position, Isola created several iconic prints during the 1950s and 1960s – prints which were considered avant-garde at the time.

Even so, her home studio presented restrictions. “A good example of her working method is from 1961 when she designed the Joonas (Jonah) collection,” says Kivilinna. Isola’s own studio was too small to make large patterns, so she went to the Printex (Marimekko) factory at night when no production was happening. “She took large rolls of cardboard and opened them on the printing tables, around 20 metres long.” During the night, she painted giant graphic patterns on these cardboard rolls free-hand with a big brush, resulting in prints such as Silkkikuikka, Joonas and Nooa.

Unfortunately, no original material remains from these sessions today. But later, around 1967, she designed with the same method in her own studio. “In the Design Museum, we have some cardboard rolls where the technique is the same,” says Kivilinna, highlighting a collection of five metre-long cardboard rolls with the print morphing across the canvas. “The painting starts with some idea, then it changes and becomes totally different at the end of the roll,” he explains. “Some of those ideas are in the 1967 collection.”

Maija’s signature style has, for its part, had a significant impact on Marimekko’s iconic design language. “These prints are very much still alive, amongst an increasingly global audience, conveying the story of the Finnish lifestyle and the functional and simple aesthetic deriving from it,” says Kemell-Kutvonen. “They all reflect the Finnish way of living in its simplified beauty and powerful rhythm, and they all found their way into the homes of Finns in the ’60s and ’70s.”

Isola’s designs spanned pop art strawberry motifs, allegedly inspired by The Beatles’ ‘Strawberry Fields Forever ’ (Mansikkavuoret, or Strawberry Mountains) and reinterpretations of her own art, for example the Kaksoset (Twins) pattern, which used twin cats that had appeared in an almost identical form in a previous gouache art work. One of her earliest designs is, however, one of her most timeless: Appelsiini.

Designed in 1950 and depicting cross sections of oranges, it is one of Isola’s very first prints for Marimekko. Appelsiini has traits “typical for Isola designs,” says Kivilinna. “There is a simple motif, the hand-painted circle, which is repeated to cover the whole surface of the fabric.” It was an idea the artist supposedly brought back from Barcelona, having feasted on juicy oranges during a long trip around southern Europe.

According to Kivilinna, it is difficult to say if Isola actually had fruit on her mind when she designed the print, however. “My interpretation is that she just designed a pattern, and the name was given after the fact by Armi Ratia or Isola herself,” says Kivilinna. There are many stories about the collection meetings in Marimekko, where patterns were selected for the collections. “Armi Ratia and the marketing team, together with Isola, just gave names to designs after what they resemble,” he says. “Like, in this case, it does not look much like oranges, but it sounds funny.”

Kaivo (Well), from 1964, is another example in which the design is a straightforward motif. “This pattern was inspired by a water drop falling into a well, creating receding waves into the surface of the water,” says Kemell-Kutvonen. Such repetition is also a typical feature in Isola’s designs, according to Kivilinna. “The border of the repeat is not avoided. It is an essential part of the design,” he explains. “Normally and historically in printed fabrics, the pattern is made in a way that you don’t easily see what the repetition of the pattern is. The printed fabric is like a continuous surface, you can take a small or long piece of fabric, and it looks the same.”

With her ties to Marimekko, it is easy to forget who Isola was beyond her role at the brand. A trained textile artist, she also became a painter in the early 1950s, with Kivilinna noting that there is a large collection of her paintings in the Hämeenlinna Art Museum. It’s a collection that curators keep returning to, recognising that they are as integral to Isola’s body of work as her prints.

The undeniable truth is that without Isola, our very idea of Finnish design – be it soft furnishing or fashion – would not be the same. “Maija Isola’s impression on Finnish design can clearly be seen in Marimekko’s production and how the company still invites new designers to work with,” concludes Kivilinna. “There are no expectations or rules for designers on what should be done. So in this way, the designer is like an artist when working with pattern design.”

Isola’s unique sensibilities in creating impactful prints quite literally changed Raita’s mind about florals and, as such, Marimekko’s entire design direction. The mastermind behind Finland’s most famous print may have passed away in 2001, but her poppies were the predecessors to a large blooming bouquet of Marimekko patterns – a heritage which continues to blossom to this day.