A Distinctive Visionary
Ritva Puotila, co-founder of Woodnotes, is one of Finland’s most internationally renowned textile artists. She has been awarded the Gold Medal at the Milan Triennale, and her work has been included in the collection of the prestigious Museum of Modern Art MoMA in New York.
“I have always seen my artistic work and Woodnotes as a single whole. The different aspects have nourished each other,” Ritva Puotila has said.
Dialogue has always characterized Puotila’s way of working and her relationship with the surrounding world. Throughout her career, it has been impossible to separate her artistic practice from Woodnotes products. Many ideas first emerged through her artistic work and were then further developed in Woodnotes products — and through that process she might gain new insights that would again find their way into her art. And vice versa.
However, the path to becoming an internationally recognized textile designer and co-founder of Woodnotes was a multifaceted one.
A Colorist with an Unfailing Eye
Puotila was born in 1935 in Vyborg to a Karelian family that had to evacuate during the war. As a child she drew and painted, and in 1954 Puotila moved to Helsinki to study decorative painting and stage design at the Institute of Industrial Arts.
During her studies she constantly received praise for her sense of color, and throughout her career she has been distinctly known as a colorist. Puotila’s unfailing eye for color forms the backbone of the Woodnotes collection, and in her art textiles colors have shone with a distinctive brilliance for decades.
Already during her studies Puotila took part in rya competitions, and encouraged by the success she achieved there, she founded Studio Ritva Puotila in 1960 immediately after completing her studies. She began producing artworks and commissioned pieces and participating in design competitions.
Later that same year, at only 25 years old, she won the Gold Medal at the Milan Triennale for her rya rug ‘Zeus’. In the rya designs of the 1960s, deep red and blue-violet glow intensely, and the visual language is strongly graphic yet vibrant and archaic. The names of the ryas first emerged from classical mythology, later from the names of people close to her, and eventually from Finnish nature and folklore: ‘On a Tussock in the Forest’, ‘Spell’, ‘Will-o’-the-Wisp’…
Ritva Puotila won the Gold Medal at the Milan Triennale for her rya rug ‘Zeus’. The picture shows a detail of the art piece.
‘The Day the Ice Broke’ was the first rya in which Puotila drew powerful inspiration from nature: from the sea, where drifting ice floes seemed to flee in lines. In the alternation of white and pale gray Puotila saw an interesting rhythm — a compositional idea. Since then, the colors of Finnish nature throughout the seasons and the rich textures of the natural world have influenced many of Puotila’s art textiles as well as her functional designs.
A Successful International Career
In 1961 Puotila’s career took a major turn when she won an invitation-only competition organized by the American company Dansk Designs and was invited to design a collection of table textiles for the company. The collaboration continued for decades, and Puotila’s aesthetic became well known and sought after in the United States.
As a freelance designer, Puotila worked for many international companies, including the Swedish Denbo AB and the Swedish-Swiss fashion companies Made In and Made in European Fashion. Around the same time Puotila also gained her first experience designing carpets for industrial production: she designed brightly colored and boldly patterned rya carpets for the Finnish-American company Finnrya for 23 years, until the company was eventually discontinued. All of these collaborations were marked by bold exploration, experimentation with materials, and Puotila’s naturally strong and distinctive use of color.
Alongside her commercial design work, Puotila continued creating art, and her art textiles were constantly exhibited abroad. Her visibility was especially strong in the United States, and one of her works entered the collection of the Museum of Modern Art MoMA in New York.
Her own artistic practice gradually became freer and more intuitive in expression. By the 1980s patterns had almost completely disappeared. What remained were colors — their dialogue and rhythm, carefully refined proportions, and overall form. The art textiles of the 1980s feel almost immersive in their three-dimensionality, created purely through the use of color.
In 1986 Puotila held her first major solo exhibition. She designed a partly retrospective exhibition at the 500-square-meter Galleria Otso, presenting both her art and functional textiles: enormous monumental ryas made with linen and wool yarns.
A decisive development for the future was that in a few of the artworks she experimented with an entirely new material: paper yarn. Puotila had always been interested in plant fibers, and during her work trips to the Far East she began to reflect on what constitutes a Finnish textile and what Finnish materials might be. Paper and wood, of course — although at the time this idea was far from obvious.
“I have always been fascinated by the everyday beauty of paper,” Puotila has said. “Paper is a fiber of its own kind. It is light, and colors glow on its white surface. The unbleached natural tone of paper is beautifully pure as it is.”
Ritva Puotila: “Paper is a fiber of its own kind. It is light, and colors glow on its white surface. The unbleached natural tone of paper is beautifully pure as it is.”
The Birth of Woodnotes
Puotila’s son Mikko Puotila became excited about the innovative material, paper yarn, and suggested to his mother that they establish a company producing home textiles from it. Puotila immediately embraced the idea.
“Finland is a country of forests and paper — why couldn’t it be used in other ways as well?”
Woodnotes was founded on March 15, 1987.
Woodnotes was noticed immediately. The products, with their graphic forms and harmonious color palette, seemed to contain something new — yet at the same time something timelessly classical. Puotila designed the Woodnotes collection drawing on everything she had learned around the world: a product had to be functional and durable.
Its visual language and color harmony also had to stand the test of time. Puotila wanted to create products that do not demand attention but instead naturally converse with the rest of the home interior.
Even today many homes still use products from the very first Woodnotes collections. They exist side by side with newer ones. Carpets from different eras can also easily be combined because the shades always harmonize beautifully — just as they do in nature.
Art and Design Living Side by Side
Alongside Woodnotes, Puotila continued exploring paper yarn in her unique artworks. She tested the material and its possibilities in ever new art textiles.
Puotila has often emphasized how important a material-driven approach is to her: exploring the potential of the material itself. Woodnotes would never have come into being without Puotila’s curiosity and her way of approaching new materials through art.
“I have wanted to explore the possibilities of paper yarn, to continually find new ways of approaching it. It is a fascinating and multidimensional fiber — a material you can converse with endlessly. I have also wanted to expand the Woodnotes collection gradually and thoughtfully. In the products, the overall composition is important: structure, the proportions of color, subtle variations in tone and rhythm,” Puotila has said.
Lume, art textile, Ritva Puotila 2005 and New York paper yarn rug.
Puotila is also fascinated by combining paper yarn with softer materials — both in her art and in the Woodnotes collection. Cotton and wool bring softness to the sculptural quality of paper yarn. Together they seem to converse; they feel alive. Puotila often repeated that everything begins with the right kind of yarn.
Paper yarn is also literally a living material: it is made from northern softwood trees, and perhaps one could think that some of the energy of the tree and forest remains within it.
Pure Presence
Puotila is a master of scale. In the products she designs, shapes and colors are in exactly the right relationship with one another — and also in the right relationship with the surrounding space, whatever its size or character may be. Central to Puotila’s work was empathy: entering into the space and its functions, understanding the space in relation to people.
In Puotila’s carpets, curtains, and art textiles, the rhythm of patterns and colors is symmetrical, but the material itself and the handmade surface bring an organic counterforce. The result is at once controlled and alive.
It is as if Puotila repeatedly manages to find the natural rhythm of things — the form of pure existence. Perhaps that is why Woodnotes carpets are so often said to radiate calmness into their surroundings.
Sources for the article include the publication Ritva Puotila (Design Museum, 2003), and articles written by Carla Enbom and Leena Svinhufvud.
