Pieces of Aalto

Artek has a longstanding friendship with Japanese fashion and textile designer Akira Minagawa. The first collaboration between the Finland aficionado Minagawa, founder of Japan-based fashion company minä perhonen, and Artek goes back to 2008, when he transformed the seat of Alvar Aalto’s Stool 60 into a labyrinth - a playful, tongue-in-cheek gesture. Creating the FIN/JPN Friendship Collection without his contribution would have been unthinkable. This book presents a conversation between Minagawa and his heroes Alvar and Aino Aalto. Minagawa created highly personal drawings in response to images of Aalto's standards, products and architectural shapes, which he selected from the Artek archives. Via the medium of sketching, Minagawa translates the original images until they become poetic patterns and quirky creatures. The result is a book that juxtaposes Minagawa’s drawings with images that inspired them. He moved away from the abstract quality typical of his textile designs, toward a visual dialogue between the world of the Aaltos’ and Minagawa’s own fertile imagination.