“Oh my God!” was my immediate reaction as I was the first to hurriedly slip through the velvet doors from the garden into the exhibition hall at the opening of TRYKKRAFT at Designmuseum Danmark, just after the opening speeches. If only I could have two minutes alone with the works before the crowd flooded in.

Tall, easel-like frames formed a zig-zag pattern across the room, with textiles stretched taut from floor to ceiling. Wow! The excitement hit me instantly. I must admit upfront that I came with some prior knowledge, having helped the eight textile printers with various texts, so I am familiar with their work. The editorial team is aware of this, and while reviewers strive for “objectivity,” we are very much subjects with opinions about what we see, sense, and feel. In my view, the art of reviewing lies in combining one’s knowledge with what is observed, so that professional insight and expertise shine through. Yet, the subjective element is always present – for better or worse.

That said, and being fully transparent, I was still genuinely thrilled when I was allowed to revisit the exhibition alone one quiet morning. Honestly, I felt utterly delighted on behalf of both the craft of textile printing and Designmuseum Danmark. This exhibition manages to achieve several goals at once: foremost among them, it gives textile printing an extremely dignified positioning and a refined presentation, and it finally allows the museum to showcase its incredibly beautiful and relevant collection of printed textiles

The textiles, collected over the course of 90 years, have, according to curator and museum inspector Kirsten Toftegaard, been stored away for around 50 years for many of the pieces. This explains why several of the textiles in the archival section of the exhibition are slightly creased. They are, after all, used textiles that bear the marks of a lived life, as Toftegaard acknowledges. And ironing them is simply out of the question, as the fibres would deteriorate under such treatment. This premise—as a museum that conserves cultural heritage and presents it from both a historical and contemporary perspective—becomes yet another fly caught in the exhibition’s well-crafted web.

The exhibition is divided into a contemporary section and another showcasing the museum’s rich archive. The contemporary section places special emphasis on eight living textile printers, while also highlighting a solid handful of current textile artists drawn from the museum’s archival collection.

Textile printing is a unique discipline within the broader textile arts, because it merges craftsmanship and artistry in a delicate dialogue between the free hand and the repetitive process of reproducing a pattern. The colours used—known as reactive dyes—bind chemically to the fibres, creating a depth and vibrancy that no industrial production can match, especially when printed in multiple overlapping layers, as is often the case. This is, in essence, what textile printing art is all about. It is also one of the more technically demanding crafts, requiring both experience and cunning to practise—and above all, to master.

Hegelund, Friis, Enevold and Fabricius Møller

Let’s start at the beginning. Eight living Danish textile printers — Josefina Enevold, Lisbet Friis, Bitten Hegelund, Else Borup Kallesøe, Anne Fabricius Møller, Liv Marie Rømer, Trine Tronhjem and Janne Wendt — present work created specifically for this exhibition, displayed on oversized, Japanese-inspired wooden easels. Each of the eight printers is introduced with their own presentation — printed on fabric, naturally. Form and content, you know. And it’s elegantly executed by Rasmus Koch Studio, who cleverly use the selvage (the fabric’s edge) to carry information about the exhibition — just like on industrial textiles. Nice touch!

The Danish artist Albert Mertz’s spirit is present in the red/blue colour scheme of the graphic communication, making it inviting and informative. Additionally, a spot-on bonus is that the textile banners are printed by the new Danish factory in Nordvest, founded by former fashion student and entrepreneur Trine Young. Great to support local production when the exhibition is precisely about Danish, local, hand-printed textiles. Form and content again — beautifully done!

Bitten Hegelund’s striped, yet broken lines welcome visitors into the exhibition. Straight lines — but not quite, as both the colour choices and the slightly “impure” and somewhat ‘tacky’ shades in Hegelund’s combinations feel rather daring. The colour pairings aren’t obvious, which makes them all the more inspiring. It’s a bit like tasting something you never thought you’d like — but love once you dare to try. Hegelund’s fractured linear patterns certainly made this reviewer’s eyes widen, as they shatter expectations of a strict, linear, and seemingly simple approach. Up close, you see what it’s all about: the dialogue between colour and textile, and how the dyes are pressed deep into the fibres with the hands and strength of the body — here you spot the small, irregular quirks that come from the organic work of the hand. The subtle shifts that make the whole thing alive and distinctly handmade. Crafted with knowledge, intuition, and years of experience at the printing table.

Lisbeth Friis is the next to overwhelm you — because that’s exactly what happens. Her powerful textiles, with their bold colour schemes and patterns, grab you by the throat in her unmistakable signature style. What really defines Lisbeth Friis’s work are the recognisable stripes and the deep, striking colours such as blue, rich red, pink, black, and a yellow that shifts from curry to a delicate pale hue. Stripes, dots, and checks make up Friis’s characteristic vocabulary, alongside the intense colours, with the occasional sneaky streak of neon thrown in. There’s colour and energy in every inch, and Friis is fearless.

In the textiles on display, collectively titled Magiske Tern: Blurred Vision, the checks are interpreted freely — at times appearing as stripes dotted with spots. The result is wonderful, graphic, and brilliantly life-affirming.

From Enevold, you arrive at Anne Fabricius Møller. I’ve followed Anne’s work for years, and honestly, I’d love to see her brain under a microscope. For you’d have to look far and wide to find such twisted paths, whimsical abstractions, and ingenious resourcefulness. Anne Fabricius Møller is a true tinkerer—like a modern-day Pippi who can make absolutely anything seem like the most obvious and valuable thing.

For this exhibition, Fabricius Møller (again – as it’s something of a signature approach for her) has used familiar everyday objects as printing tools. Some of these are even displayed in a small case next to her textiles. Items like the base of a plastic plant pot, plastic lids from food containers, and—if I’m not mistaken—one of the three parts of the stamp from a Bodum coffee maker can be spotted in one of the textiles.

It’s truly entertaining, and you find yourself scanning the textiles, trying to spot the humble origins of the motifs. This is why, in my view, Fabricius Møller is one of our most original textile artists at home. It’s as if her imagination has extra bandwidth, transforming overlooked everyday objects into small printing miracles. In these newly created textiles, circles are the recurring motif, combined with a repetitive pattern that has a charming, delicate batik-like quality.

Tronhjem Rømer, Wendt, and Kallesøe

The group of eight contemporary textile printers spans multiple generations, with Else Kallesøe as the eldest and most experienced. The duo Tronhjem Rømer, consisting of Liv Marie Rømer and Trine Tronhjem, are among the youngest alongside Josefina Enevold, bridging past, present, and future. Their approach strikes a balance between the digital and the analog, and they seem to have a special understanding of space.
Their hanging and presentation of the textiles stand apart from the rest of the group. The towering fabric panels are sliced lengthwise and drape sinuously, organically, and elegantly from the oversized easel, extending into the room in a charming yet restrained manner. It’s a smart choice to present the textiles this way, as it opens up the understanding that textiles in a space can do more than just hang flat against a wall. Here, the textile becomes a player in the room — and an active one at that.

Janne Wendt and Else Kallesøe occupy the final room in the long sequence that the three connected, narrow museum rooms and the contemporary section of the exhibition form—except for Mogensen’s archive drawer delights and a small station with technical info about textile printing. And how well the two artists complement each other here.

Janne Wendt, probably best known for her extremely clean, graphic forms printed on wool in cushions and blankets, here elevates herself to a lighter plane with repeated patterns resembling a phone doodle that’s been given a graphic makeover. These curled half-circles are set in dialogue with one another in various variations, compositions, and colors, showing that repetition is never quite the same. The print’s subtle shifts and the hand-printing push the generic toward an artistic and organic space where no two prints are identical.

Else Kallesøe is also graphic, in a Paul Gernes-like manner that makes me think of his decoration at Herlev Hospital. Several of Kallesøe’s striking textile banners consist of large squares in beautiful color compositions that seem to speak the same language with different accents. It’s ‘no-bullshit’ modernism in a contemporary version, and it works brilliantly. There are also vividly colored stripes that feel both light as air and richly saturated at once. Kallesøe’s textile panels exude weight in expression and craftsmanship and draw on the long red thread of experience, which peeks out like the cherry on top. But what a top it is. Kallesøe cements the group’s combined many hundreds of years of experience as a powerful craft, skill, and artistic interpretation.

Gold from the museum’s brilliant archive

In the museum’s darker rooms running parallel to the long sequence of contemporary textile printers, you’ll find gold from the archive. Daylight is reserved for the contemporary textiles, as the older pieces cannot tolerate light. After all, they represent nearly 100 years of textile printing history. Recognizable names include Marie Gudme Leth, Ruth Hull, Dorte Raaschou, and Grete Ehs Østergaard. Among more recent prints, several living textile printers such as Vibeke Riisberg, Vibeke Rohland, Dorte Østergaard Jakobsen, Margrethe Odgaard, and Louise Sass are also presented in these rooms alongside the eight contemporary printers, with works that inspire recognition and respect.
In the museum’s darker halls, the textile printer’s sensory cornucopia is a gift that keeps on giving. Again, easels are used as a staging device—now in metal—providing strict frames around the lavish printed textiles, some familiar, some seen for the first time.

And how modern, beautiful, and original most of these textiles appear. I’m especially drawn to Dorte Raaschou. Her textiles and garments—which are also part of an exhibition themed Craft Clothing (i.e., clothing made from hand-printed textiles)—could easily be plucked from a Marni catalog or a ‘60s film shot in Saint Tropez. This section also houses the brilliant dress in a showcase by Anne Fabricius Møller, created as part of her fading fabric project, where she folded pink silk organza in various ways and laid it out in the sun to fade. Once faded, she unfolded the silk, which now bears checks and stripes depending on where the folds had been. Brilliant and deeply original.

Here in the museum’s archive exhibition, there’s ample opportunity to gain insight into the Danish tradition of one-person workshops and collaborations with industry, where the era’s well-known architects and practicing artists like Arne Jacobsen and Axel Salto led the way—due to their gender. The women, however, were far superior in technique and aesthetics, as they were primarily the ones who shaped the textile printing craft with figures like Marie Gudme Leth and the Danish Calico Printing Works, established in 1935. The wealth is vast, and there’s plenty of knowledge to be gathered. In the archive section, several thematic presentation devices accompany Craft Clothing, in the form of informative and well-written texts.

Wunderschön wunderkammer

The overall exhibition concept in TRYKKRAFT is extremely convincing as a textile Wunderkammer. A candy store of mouth-watering, fabric-printed textiles that you just want to own and wrap yourself in. The exhibition architecture, the seamless staging, the graphics, and the presentation — together with the large showcases outdoors in the museum’s courtyard — all form fine, relevant cogs in the overall machinery, and it’s hard to find fault with this exhibition achievement.

The only thing that grates on my curatorial heart are the small notes pinned onto the textiles with straight pins in the archive section of the exhibition. Again, the idea is good both in form and content — after all, that’s how one works with textiles — but from a communication standpoint, it doesn’t work optimally. The notes wrinkle with the fabric because of the pins, making them difficult to read, let alone decipher. This approach should have been designed more with the visitors’ experience in mind.

Another earnest wish is that all the exhibition’s easels had been made of wood, so the warmth of the natural material and the Japanese reference would have been a pure, beautiful touch. But according to Toftegaard, the budget ran out, which shows that even the flagship museum in this field doesn’t have unlimited resources. Welcome back to reality, sigh.

Further reading…