REMARKABLY ENOUGH it's often the most personal that becomes the most universally applicable. Contrary to all marketing logic, it isn't when a recording artist tries to sing for everyone, but tells something utterly personal, that the truly great hit song is made. Just as often the author's most private thoughts result in a bestseller.
      The same is true for Erika Pekkari's designs. The design concepts that are born inside her head, compositions as urbane as they are timeless, compare to no one else's. Though Erika Pekkari only starts from a feeling in herself—"this I take to"—it is millions of people who buy her designs. Who feel that her forms, patterns, and fabrics speak just to them.

      I myself walk on Erika Pekkari's rugs, read in her armchair, drink from her glasses and sleep in her sheets. Not once when I see a film is it possible to miss Erika Pekkari's designs. In Fight Club there is a scene when the main character Jack [Edward Norton] rings up FÜRNI [IKEA] and says, "I'd like to order the Erika Pekkari dust ruffles".
      If there is one thread throughout all Erika Pekkari does—whether it be a single quilt cover, or the colour composition for a restaurant or an entire house—it is that utility is always primary. As she herself says, "I am a total pragmatist." Perhaps that is also why she stands always outside the trend. Erika Pekkari's designs are nothing one places on a shelf and admires from a distance. Erika Pekkari's designs one uses everyday.

                        Jan Gradvall, journalist, 2003