Tove Jansson drew Little Sales in Kimono – Moomin Diagues born in Japan will be auctioned

/ Culture

Tove Jansson drew Little Sales in Kimono – Moomin Diagues born in Japan will be auctioned

Tove Jansson
Tove Jansson with Moomin dolls in the 1950s. The Moomins were particularly fond of the Japanese, who made the characters an animation series without permission.

Helander sells Tove Jansson’s drawings at the online auction. The drawings were created in Tokyo when Jansson visited the Finnish diplomatic family.

Auction Helander’s sales catalog has nine mobile drawings. The trace of the drawings is gentle but recognizable. Moomin, some of the characters in Japanese outfits. Little My is wearing a kimono and a Japanese outfit in Moomin.

Picture of Tove Jansson's drawing that presents the Moomin troll in a Japanese outfit.
Tove Jansson’s drawing of Muo, who apparently has a Japanese Yturu wearing. The signed drawing has been offered € 1,600 at the auction.
Picture of Tove Jansson's drawing that is auctioned. The picture shows a Nipru character with a kangaroo bag in the stomach and a small nipple there.
Surprisingly, Nipsu has a little lash in a kangaroo bag. The starting price for Tove Jansson’s drawing is € 1,500 at the auction.

Mummies in a fast -paced Japan

Jari Härkönen says that Tove Jansson and Tuulikki Pietilä went to Tokyo with a TV company making a Japanese animation. The company had offered to pay the couple a flight to Tokyo, but the Finns wanted to travel to the country along the country. They adventured to Japan by train via Russia. From Tokyo, the duo continued at least to the United States and Mexico.

The animators of the Japanese TV company were enthusiastic about the Moomin and grabbed them as characters in their animation series without negotiating Jansson in advance.

* The Mūmin (Moomin)* series used the characters created by Jansson and the milieu as a starting point, but the Moomins had been substantially changed.

Tove Jansson banned the sale of the series outside Japan.

According to Jari Härkönen, the trip to Tokyo had been agreed due to copyright negotiations in the series.

Moomins were later made several animations in Japan, European countries and in the Soviet Union. The most famous Japanese -Dutch * Moomin Valley Stories * series was released in 1990.

A photo of Tove Jansson's drawing for the auction, with Little My Kimono wearing.
Little sells posing for kimono wearing. The drawing signed by Tove Jansson has been offered € 1,500 at the auction.

Dinner in Finnish home

When Riitta Härkönen invited Finnish artists to her home for dinner, everything proceeded as usual. First they ate, then switched to coffee in the living room. At this point, the family’s five -year -old jumped on the couch in the evening and would not have focused on the debate anymore.

Tove Jansson asked to get pens and paper. He began to draw the Moomins for Jari to calm the situation.

– I remember that Jansson’s children’s books * who would comfort Nyyt * and the like were in the evening, says Jari Härkönen.

So the Moomins were familiar characters. When Jansson and Pietilä left, the mother of the family removed the drawings from the grove and made the paintings in the rooms of Jari and the soon-to-be Mariko sister.

Now is the time for the drawings to continue on the journey and they will be auctioned until 9 March. Some of the drawings were once borrowed for the Ateneum Art Museum Tove Jansson’s 100th anniversary exhibition in 2014. This year, the Moomin characters will be 80 years old.

*Corrected 3.3. at 10.10 am Name of Japanese Moomin Series and linked to the Moomin Chararcters in the series.*