Together with my second-cousin Erle I design products that are inspired by Edvard Munch’s paintings. We are relatives of Edvard Munch so we take great pride in designing these products, as we want to make great designer products that incorporates or pick up elements from his artworks. In this image I'm wearing a bamboo scarf inspired by the bedding in Edvard Munch's painting "Between the clock and the bed" seen below.
Here is our Family Tree so that you in short can understand our relation to Edvard Munch
As you can see not many children came out of the Munch siblings. It was only Edvard Munch's brother Peter Andreas that had a child, Andrea. She's our great-grandmother. Andrea had four children, Arne is my grandfather, Peter Andreas is Erle's grandfather.
Peter Andreas to the left, Arne to the right (I'm a bit amazed by their height difference, my grandfather was almost 2 metres)
Anyway, when we design our products we spend hours researching Edvard Munch's art. It's a very rewarding process, and I'll make another post later about the design process for one specific product.
Here is some of our packaging design made in the super light and strong Paulownia wood:
Our goal is to use artwork that are not so familiar to the public, and if we use the most famous artworks like "The Scream", "Madonna" or "The Sun" we want to take a different direction in how to display the artwork. One example I'll give you for now is our Mugs with Edvard Munch's "The Scream" and "Anxiety". Here are the original artworks:
Below are the mugs that we have designed, and as you can see in this particular case we decided to just use elements from the sky in the artwork. With every product we include a hangtag with the original artwork used, as well as our story and family relation.
I think I'll leave it there for now, but I look forward to telling you more about these product designs, and to give you an insight to the process, the frustrations, the joy and the fun in a future post. Don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions!
:) Helen