The program in 2023 included pop-up sales by textile designers and manufacturers, discussion around the textile industry, entrepreneurship, education and design, as well as exhibitions in the Forssa city center.
Forssa Textile Week is based on the history of Finnish textiles and the desire to create a sustainable future for textiles.
The partners for the event were the Finnish Textile and Fashion, Aalto University, Textile Artists' Association TEXO in Finland and Yosowoigarden in Japan.
Thank you all the participants and visitors of Forssa Textile Week!
Forssa was established around the textile industry. Swedish born Axel Wahren (1814-1885) founded a cotton spinning mill in 1849. The mill was soon followed by a weaving mill, yarn dye works and Finlands first industrial fabric printing plant in 1861. Forssa maintained its status as a focal place of printmaking know-how and design, through the age of industrial textile printing in Finland, and continued onwards from the 1930s as an important part of Finlayson Co. From the year 1951, the Forssa design studio hosted textile designers and artists who created patterns of different colors and designs: stripes, polka dots, florals, abstracts, and everything in between, always getting inspired by the movements of art, popular culture, architecture, and design of their time. These printed fabrics dressed our nation, decorated our homes, and spread across the border to international markets.
Industrial scale textile production in Forssa ended in 2009. The heritage of the textile factories is now stored in Forssa museum's textile archive, which contains fabric samples, sketches, artifacts and other material originating from between the 1800's and 2000's. Forssa museum and the Pattern Centre tell the story of the textile community, the factory, the designers and production of industrial textiles.