This February the global retailer IKEA is presenting its new collection of fabrics with a sweet name Charlotta. The IKEA company commissioned Åsa Ekström, a girl who became a mangaka, a manga cartoonist when she was 13, to create a design which would mix Japan and Scandinavia.
The images inspired by eastern way of drawing comics strips appeared on throw-pillows and fabric pictures, as well as on a lot of other decorative items for making the rooms cosy and emotionally warm. Åsa demonstrates how strong her love of Tokyo is by depicting its style on the textiles. “It’s a great city and dressed in its garb of neon it becomes almost magic”, notes she.
Japanese woodcuts called ukiyo-e were among the thing, which inspired the creative girl as well. Ukiyo-e art in Japanese stands for “pictures of a floating world” and it appeared in the country back in the seventeenth century.
She has also employed unexpected approaches: “Here I’ve mixed Japanese tattooing with Scandinavian motifs. A girl in manga style dressed in a Swedish folk costume and a Viking made with an old-world Japanese mask used on stage in Noh plays as a model”, says she about some of the items in the collection.
And of course she didn’t forget about the origami, and one of her design presented Scandinavian animals “made” this way.
Åsa Ekström has never done textiles before, and considering the fact that she steps into this area with IKEA, that’s a huge start.