The June issue of Swedish design magazine Forum Aid features seven young Icelandic designers in an article headlined “Iceland’s Future.” According to editor Daniel Golling, Icelandic design is different from other Nordic design.
“The community is small here and Iceland doesn’t have any large furniture industry. That makes Icelandic designers more versatile than their colleagues in the other Nordic countries,” Golling told Fréttabladid.
The designers featured in the article are Signý Kolbeinsdóttir, Ólöf María Ólafsdóttir (a.k.a. Marý), Björg Juto, Gudfinna Mjöll Magnúsdóttir, Kristján Eggertsson, Adalsteinn Stefánsson and Brynhildur Pálsdóttir.
One of the designs mentioned in the article is Marý’s Virtue Blanket. “It is big enough to embrace two persons with warmth and virtue and remind people to be virtuous,” Marý said in a description of her product design.
The blanket, which is made from Icelandic wool, was inspired by cloths from the early 18th century in Iceland, into which brides to-be embroidered virtues.
The cloths were then used as counterpanes or bedspreads. Samples of such virtue cloths are kept at the National Museum of Iceland.
Click here to read more about the modern Virtue Blanket, which recently went on sale in the Epal Design store at Keflavík International Airport. It is also available at Saltfélagid, Kraum, the National Museum in Reykjavík, and online design store birkiland.com.
