“It’s open to the public,” says Swedish-born interior designer Beata Heuman, who founded her London studio in 2013. “The couple playfully mixed strong colours and the folk motifs found further north in Sweden. The house is very layered: the pair mixed dark, ebonised wood, natural or painted wooden furniture, reclaimed wood-panelling Carl picked up from a local castle, embroidered textiles and oversized traditional Swedish stoves that look out of proportion in the spaces they’re in.”
Heuman, who is also a fan of Josef Frank, adds: “I believe Ericson was influenced by Swedish folk art but was also a child of her time – of Swedish Grace and modernism – and created a new style. Frank has influenced almost all my projects. I love the patterns on his textiles that twist and turn; it’s hard to see where they start and end. One is called Mirakel (Miracle) because he thought it miraculous that he’d worked out its design.”
Although Ericson was passionate about preserving and promoting Swedish craft, some see Svenskt Tenn as a unique phenomenon, standing apart from Swedish design history. “The Arts and Crafts movement and Svenkst Tenn, which appeared later, share some values but I hesitate to make a straight-line trajectory between them,” Striztler tells the BBC. “Ericson was a pioneer in her own right. She could create beauty from everything she touched – a simple bouquet of flowers, a table setting, which she was best known for, or a pewter object. She had a gift for creating environments that transformed rooms, making them comfortable, practical, beautiful.”
According to Jane Withers, curator of the Svenskt Tenn exhibition, while the brand was influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement and by Morris’s textiles, a shift to its hallmark style began in the 1930s when Ericson began collaborating with Frank. “The brand’s eclecticism sprang partly from Frank’s aversion to the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk – the home as a complete work of art in one style. For him, being modern was about being free rather than imposing a fixed design aesthetic. Svenskt Tenn’s philosophy is all about a generous, joyful, progressive idea of the home that looked beyond changing styles and dogmas to create a space of psychological and physical comfort. At a time when we’re surrounded by stylised identikit interiors, this human-centric viewpoint is so refreshing.”
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