The Quest for Kalevala page 12

Kalevala is like coded into Finnish DNA, most of Finns knowing the story. And our national painter, Akseli Gallen-Kallela has done the most recognised and iconic paintings about Kalevala, like "The Defence of the Sampo" and "Forging of the Sampo". Later generations have used and re-used his illustrative landscape. In this "Quest for Kalevala" story Rosa used twice Gallen-Kallela's paintings for his inspiration, in this 12th page of the story is presenting "Forging of the Sampo". So, maybe it is not needed to explain more why I simply needed to get this artwork into my collection ;-)

About framing the artwork. For this pair (pages 12 & 13) I wanted to use something which is linking directly into the Sampo itself. And once Sampo was golden, and producing gold (like also salt and flour), it mandated the color of the frames. The starting point was those "Shards of rusty metal" (in Finnish version "rusty pieces of metal junk") which Gyro used, the remainings of first original Sampo. So, if finding a frame where is this kind of pieces, having mix of rusty brown and gold color, I guess I can stop searching more ;-). I looked over 12 months suitable frames...
Used "floating" hanging (by archival tape) to present the whole artwork, not hiding anything behind a passepartout, but showing how it left from Rosa's desk. There is still a small golden rim list, adding 5mm "safety margin", I mean air between the glass and the art, so the art will never touch the glass.

This artwork should have went into some museum, as the complete story, when originals came for sale in an auction 2015. But things happened so that this most important Rosa's story, at least for Finnish readers, "broke down" around the globe, just like the original Sampo in Kalevala. Maybe it is the best in this way, so the artwork will bring joy for many comic art collectors. However, in a museum it would have been delighted more folks. I am feeling very happy to "rescue" few originals from the story.
To give perspective, when Finnish National Gallery (Ateneum) organised a small "Duckburg" exhibition, it attracted 245.000+ visitors just in 5 months! In this exhibition was only 12 works, mostly computer colorised drawings. Yes, read that again: National gallery presenting computer colorised pictures! This is what I call pop art ;-) Then just think and place into context this Rosa's original artwork for the story "The Quest for Kalevala".

The story has been published already in Brazil, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Island, Indonesia, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden and US; in some countries several times. You can check details from here: https://inducks.org/story.php?c=D+99078
In Finnish this story has been printed in several editions, as "Sammon salaisuus". First time in the book: "Sammon salaisuus ja muita Don Rosan parhaita" (https://inducks.org/issue.php?c=fi/DR+1999#p007).
This Finnish first edition was awesome sales hit, and so far 12 editions has been done and over 100.000++ copies made since 1999. Remembering to scale into population of 5.5M inhabitants.

#DonRosa