Viola Gråsten 1920 - 1994

Pattern genius and rebel Viola Gråsten said, "The perfect often gets so boring". With those words said and with her innovative patterns, color combinations and rya rugs, she achieved star status in the fabric world during the 50s and 60s.

With the pattern "Oomph", she made a great sensation when it premiered in the light hall at Nordiska Kompaniet in Stockholm in 1952. Everyone wanted to see the fabric and the queue wound long outside the department store. The cheeky and daring color combinations together with the dancing triangles quickly become fashionable with the young generation and Viola Gråsten becomes popular.

She enjoyed herself best under the rooftops in her studio where she played out her patterns. The colors she decided long before the pattern got its form and impatient as she was neither changed nor processed them. The names of the patterns were important, but most of the time they came up with something fun she picked up on the way to the studio from a newspaper or from jazz. Viola Gråsten loved to dance so the names swing, sway or boogie were no coincidence.

In an interview in Form 1965, she says that she does not care if an interior is beautiful or not. "What I want to achieve is the feeling of life."