Signe Hammarsten-Jansson Signe Hammarsten-Jansson Signe "Ham" Hammarsten-Jansson (née Hammarsten, 1 June 1882 Hannäs, Sweden - 6 June 1970 Porvoo) was a Swedish graphic artist who designed, among other things, around 220 Finnish postage stamps during the course of three decades. She was the mother of Tove Jansson, creator of the highly successful "Moomin" characters. Signe Hammarsten came from a respectable Swedish clerical family and was the child of a pastor's daughter and a court chaplain. Hammarsten's parents were opposed to her becoming an artist, and as a girl she had considered a career as a surgeon. Hammarsten went through 8 years of
Sophia Jansson "Jaana" in 1965. In May 2003, The Finnish Embassy in London arranged for events to surround the recent translation of Tove Jansson's 1972 "Sommarboken", a novel which featured the fictionalized life of the young Sophia on an island. During this event, publishers presented works by Sophia Jansson and Johanna Sinisalo. Jansson was later interviewed in June 2003 by "The Daily Telegraph" where she explained the details surrounding the story presented in "Sommarboken" and the relationship shared between Jansson and her aunt, Tove Jansson. She would write in more detail about this topic in 2006 in the Scandinavian Review, and again