Josef Frank: The making of Swedish modern design

Scandinavian Review, Autumn 1996 by Long, Christopher

For the past half century, beautiful, well-designed, and comfortable furnishings have been among Sweden's most recognizable products. The extraordinary success of IKEA and other interior design companies have made Swedish furniture, fabrics and other household products known and admired around the world.

Few, however, are aware that one of the founders of Swedish Modern design was a foreigner, the Viennese architect Josef Frank (1885-1967). Fleeing the rise of fascism, Frank left Austria in 1933 with his Swedish wife Anna and settled in Stockholm, where he lived for most of the remainder of his life. During the 1930s, as the principal designer for the furnishings shop Svenskt Tenn, he helped to develop the softened, cozy, eclectic look that became characteristic of Sweden's unique contribution to modern design. Indeed, so successful were Frank's bright, colorful furnishings, fabrics, lamps, and rugs that many of his nearly 2,000 designs are still being produced by Svenskt Tenn today, and the spirit of Frank's warm and humane modernism remains a powerful influence in contemporary Scandinavian design.

Frank believed that the purpose of modern design was to provide comfort for both the body and the mind. Reacting to the hard-edged style developed by modernist designers like Marcel Breuer and Mart Stam, he called for a new approach, one that would emphasize a sense of coziness and relaxation. In his many writings, he chastized those who were more concerned with creating the appearance of modernism than with serving the real needs of their clients. The inspiration for modernism, he argued, should come not from advances in technology, but from a careful study of the history and culture of everyday life.

A Style Rooted in Vienna

Many of the ideas Frank developed in his work for Svenskt Tenn originated in his early designs in Austria. The son of a well-to-do Jewish textile manufacturer and wholesaler, Frank studied architecture at the Vienna Polytechnic. After graduating in 1910, he opened a practice with two of his former classmates, Oskar Strnad and Oskar Wlach, specializing in designing interiors and houses for the Viennese middle class. Many of his works drew on Austrian Biedermeier furniture, as did the arrangement of the rooms, which were clearly and simply ordered. But Frank also found inspiration in a wide variety of other sources, including Chippendale furniture, East Asian art, the Italian Renaissance, Central European and Swedish handicrafts, and Shaker design. What set Frank's work apart from that of most of his Viennese contemporaries, however, was his rejection of the symmetrical room layouts and en suite groupings that were popular at the time. Instead he treated the furnishings independently, placing them casually so that the pieces could be rearranged, added to, or removed without changing the fundamental character of the room. He rejected the search for new forms for the sake of novelty alone, arguing instead that as long as older pieces still retained their usefulness there was no reason to cast them off. "The home must not be a mere efficient machine," Frank declared. "It must offer comfort, rest and coziness (soothing to the eye, restful to the soul)....There are no puritan principles in good interior decoration."

These ideas became the basis of Haus & Garten (House and Garden), the interior design store Frank and Wlach opened in Vienna in 1925. The shop featured hand-crafted furniture-typically made of wood with light or natural finishes, and with "softened" rounded corners-as well as brightly-colored floral fabrics woven from natural fibers such as linen and silk. Many of these printed textile patterns, including "Aralia," "Primavera," and "Mirakel," later became familiar Svenskt Tenn products and appeared in Frank's designs in a variety of different guises.

The Creation of "Swedish Modern"

Already by the early 1930s Frank was warning his friends and colleagues that fascism would soon engulf Germany and with it much of Central Europe. A short time after the Nazi takeover, he received an offer from Estrid Ericson, the owner of Svenskt Tenn, to become the firm's chief designer. Frank, who had spent many summers in Sweden and had designed several houses for friends and relatives in Falsterbo on the country's southern tip, immediately accepted Ericson's invitation, inaugurating a close relationship that would extend over more than three decades.

Ericson had founded Svenskt Tenn in 1924. Originally the shop featured high quality pewter ware (hence its name which means Swedish Pewter), but by the early 1930s she had begun selling modern furniture as well, including pieces by noted designer Uno Ahren and the young artist Bjorn Tragardh.

Frank's arrival ushered in a new era for Svenskt Tenn. In September 1934 he and Ericson exhibited a suite of four rooms at Liljevalchs art gallery in Stockholm displaying new designs as well as some holdovers from Haus & Garten. The high point of the show was the striking "Living room I" featuring a floral cretonne-covered sofa and a matching easy chair, a long low bar and storage cabinet-all of which sported the softened lines, natural materials and bright colors which had already become a staple of Frank's work. Many of the pieces were fashioned from mahogany and teak, both soon to become mainstays of the Scandinavian furniture industry.