Tove Slotte

Tove Slotte is a potter who is undoubtedly most known for her work as an illustrator for Arabia’s popular Moomin mugs. For what is soon to be 30 years, Tove Slotte has had the honor to interpret and transfer Tove Jansson’s classic Moomin tales from the pages of her books to Arabia’s porcelain.

Tove Slotte was already employed at Arabia when a new production manager had the idea to launch a Moomin range in 1989. Since Tove was a huge Moomin fan herself, she accepted the challenge to design and transfer the illustration to Arabia’s mugs. After she had received Tove Jansson’s approval, she went straight ahead to launch the first of many more Moomin mugs to come.

To start with, the designs on the mugs were very similar to Tove Jansson’s original drawings. However, with time, Arabia started producing more and more mugs with single Moomin characters. Every year, two seasonal mugs are introduced to the range. And even though Tove Slotte has flipped through the pages of Tove Jansson’s magical Moomin pages hundreds of times, she always finds a new story to tell. When designing, she sketches and paints the designs by hand, adjusting them to fit the design of a mug, jug or bowl. When the sketch it colored it, off to production it goes.