Forssa Textile Week 2024
Forssa Museum, FI
15. – 18.08.2024
Logo © Forssa Textile Week
The first event in August 2023, brought together Finnish and Japanese designers and manufacturers around current topics. The event welcomed an estimated 2000-3000 visitors. The program included pop-up sales, discussion about the textile industry, entrepreneurship, education, and design, as well as exhibitions. Partners for 2023 were the Finnish Textile and Fashion, Aalto University, Textile Artists' Association TEXO in Finland, and Yosowoigarden in Japan.
Patterns, Design and Sustainable Textiles
On 15th - 18th August 2024 Forssa Museum will host the second Forssa Textile Week focusing on patterns, design, and sustainable textiles. The event aims to better the role of responsible design and textiles in our society. Our goal is to nurture the sharing and exchanging of ideas between designers, industry professionals, and artists, as well as textile and design educators and students. Forssa Textile Week 2024 brings together people to discuss current phenomena concerning patterns and design. The discussions consider sustainability, longevity, and responsible practices. In addition, the event brings exhibitions and textile pop-up sales to the city center of Forssa!
SWEDEN Theme Country 2024
The theme country for the year 2024 event is Sweden. Forssa and the Finnish printed textile heritage share a common story with our Swedish neighbors. Forssa Cotton Mill was originally founded in 1847 by Axel Wahren, a Swedish-born entrepreneur. When the Forssa design atelier was established, the example came from Borås. The first Finnish designers were trained using Swedish methods, and local professionals looked to their Swedish colleagues for knowledge. Now it is time to strengthen the connection and bring it up to date with current movements in textile design.
Forssa the City of Patterns
Forssa was established around the textile industry. Swedish-born Axel Wahren (1814-1885) founded the Forssa cotton spinning mill in 1849. The mill was soon followed by a weaving mill, yarn dyeing plant, and Finland's first industrial fabric printing shop in 1861. Through the age of industrial textile printing, Forssa maintained its status as the Finnish capital of printmaking know-how and design and continued onwards from the 1930s as an important part of Finlayson Co. Established in 1951, Forssa atelier hosted textile designers who created patterns of different colors and designs: stripes, polka dots, florals, abstracts, and everything in between, always getting inspired by the movements of art, popular culture, architecture, and design of their time. These printed fabrics dressed our nation, decorated our homes and spread across the border to international markets.
Industrial-scale textile production in Forssa ended in 2009. The heritage of the textile factories is now stored in the Forssa Museum. The vast textile archive contains fabric samples, sketches, artifacts, and other material originating from between the 1800's and 2000's. Forssa Museum and the Pattern Centre tell the story of the textile community, factory, designers, and production of industrial textiles.
The ideology of the Forssa Textile Week is based on the history of Finnish textiles and the desire to create a sustainable future for textiles.
More information: https://www.forssatextileweek.fi/