Kuosiverstas

Natural fabric design

TEXT: SYNNE JOHNSSON | PHOTOS © KUOSIVERSTAS

In a small village in the middle of Finland, landscape architect Elina Salmi-Lampila is taking inspiration from Finnish nature to create fresh-looking, graphic and timeless patterned fabrics.

After being at home with her five children for many years, Salmi-Lampila started designing different fabric patterns as a hobby, and soon entered and won several design competitions in Finland. Suddenly, people started asking where they could buy her products. Her hobby became a business, and in 2016, she set-up Kuosiverstas.

“I still work as a landscape architect. It’s a good job and I love it, but this pattern designing I just couldn’t resist. It chose me in a way,” she says. “You can see my love for nature and landscapes in my designs, because that’s where I get the inspiration from.”

Salmi-Lampila lives in a small Finnish village called Kivijärvi, which means Stone Lake. Every one of her patterns has its own name, and there is always a story behind it. So far, the most popular patterns have been Wave and Devil’s field. The name Devil’s field comes from when Finnish people were superstitious. They thought large rock lands were made by the devil itself, and they still to this day refer to these large rocklands as devil’s fields.

Salmi-Lampila’s patterns are often simple with bright, bold colours and strong shapes. “There is something very Finnish about my designs,” she says. “I want to convey a message with them: to me, the countryside is important and valuable. I want to show off the locality, show that these designs come from Kivijärvi, not anywhere else.”

The fabrics are made and printed in Poland, all made of organic, ecological materials. In the future, more and more of Kuosiverstas’s fabrics will be certified by the Global Organic Textile Standard.

Salmi-Lampila sells everything through her web shop. The website is currently only available in Finnish, but soon it will be made available to users in English as well. Until then, international customers can order fabrics by e-mail.

With Kuosiverstas being a one-woman business, Salmi-Lampila does everything herself, and even though she loves every part of it and describes it as her dream job, she sometimes feels like she is on a race against the clock. “I have so many ideas and so much I want to do with the company, but I don’t have time to follow everything through. People sometimes ask how I have time for it all, and the answer is that I don’t think I do,” she laughs. “However, it’s ok to have a hectic schedule, because I really love what I do.”


Web: kuosiverstas.fi

Facebook: kuosiverstas

Contact: info@kuosiverstas.fi