As an homage to the new animated series "Moominvalley", Arabia is launching a collection featuring four pieces of concept art from the series. The mugs of the "Arabia Moominvalley collection" will be available from 14 June 2019.
The new Moomin animation series “Moominvalley”, produced by Gutsy Animations, takes Tove Jansson’s artistic work forward in time by combining the original Moomin stories with new 3D-based visual storytelling. The animations are based on the original drawings by Tove and Lars Jansson. In the animations, this is expressed by the use of light and shadows to skilfully create a sense of adventure in the Moominvalley and around it that is characteristic to Jansson.
This spring, four pieces of concept art from the animated series’ first season will also be replicated as such in Arabia’s dishes. The concept art pieces are based on different episodes starring Moomintroll, who is curious and excited about everyone and everything. He follows a weird trace in the dark forest, encounters the Groke, and wonders about the Moominvalley lost underneath the snow. Moomintroll’s curiosity leads him on an adventure where he experiences friendship, courage and tolerance.
LAST DRAGON
In the episode “The Last Dragon in the World” Moomintroll is enchanted when he finds a real dragon, just the right size to be a pet. All he wants is for the little dragon to love him back, but how do you tame something so wild?
GOLDEN TALE
In the episode “The Golden Tale” Moominpappa is inspired to put on a play all about his own adventurous youth. The episode follows the events around creating and presenting the play: the pressure to fill his father’s shoes make Moomintroll’s tail hairs fall out, and his mother’s medicine has some rather surprising side effects.
NIGHT OF THE GROKE
In the episode “Night of the Groke” Moomintroll’s mind starts to play tricks on him when he’s left home alone over night for the first time. But his worst fears are realised with the appearance of an all-too-real, nightmarish creature – The Groke!
MIDWINTER
In the episode “Midwinter Ancestor” Moomintroll faces his toughest challenge yet when he wakes up too early from hibernation. To survive the perils of deepest winter, he must first find his primal side with the help of a strange, ancient ancestor.
A special method used to reproduce the concept art on the mugs
According to Arabia, reproducing the concept art images on a ceramic surface requires plenty of expertise, prepping, in-depth knowledge of the materials and understanding colours. The animated images are rasterised, or the different shades are converted into raster dots of different sizes. This way, the image can be printed on the surface of the mug. A high-fire technique is used in the decoration process in which the illustration melts under the glaze in less than 1,200°C. This guarantees the extremely high quality of the dishes.
All of the Arabia Moominvallet mugs come with a special stamp on the bottom of the mug.