Vintage view: Estrid Ericson of Sweden
It’s almost impossible to appreciate just how hard it was to elbow your way forward as a woman in the art and design world in the first half of the twentieth century.
Even highly decorated and gifted modernist geniuses including Eileen Grey (1876-1978) and the brilliant, American artist Georgia O’Keefe (1987-1986) were attacked from without and within.
They found little commercial sponsorship, personal support or the sort of recognition middling males took for granted, at the height of their careers.
Making a mark, making a real living, took character, a centred soul and dogged, cool persistence.
Estrid Ericson (1894-1981) is a key figure in the development of the design style that we know as Scandinavian Modern, but if you’re not Danish, Swedish or Norwegian, you’ve probably never heard of her.
Her role as an interior designer, again something tittered over, even in the 1950s as a quasi-job or feminine fluffing, belies a comprehensive career grounded in the fine arts, that staged and promoted the look emerging from artist’s studios and architect’s drawing boards as a populist trend.
It’s an accomplishment that developed and lasted right up to the present day, her signature elegance and supreme confidence, shining from her many photographic portraits.
Stockholm is home to one of the most beloved and historically important retail outlets in Scandinavian, Svenskt Tenn.
Now owned by the The Kjell and Märta Beijer Foundation, it was established in 1924 by Ericson, then a 30 year old art teacher from Hjo, who had just been left a legacy on the death of her father.
The store first concentrated on the promotion of pewter ornaments and artworks, a heritage alloy not seen much in today’s market outside of specialist galleries.
Working with artist and illustrator Nils Fougstedt, the co-founding team garnered a coveted Gold Metal at the Paris Exhibition the following year in 1925.
Early pieces of Svenskt Tenn pewter, including work by Ericson herself, are now hotly collected if you’re interested (try 1stDibs.com). Key pewter pieces from the firm are still on offer, including Fougstedt’s lovely Vase Pipe, €160 c1925, and Anna Petrus’ stunning Vase Profile (with faces) c1928, €1,800, svenskttenn.se.
Estrid invested her profits to further educate her exquisite eye for line, colour, quality and detail for a larger premises and she travelled as far as South American for inspiration and for makers to reveal at her store, curating displays of old and new objects, layer upon layer in sophisticated colour-saturated, room-scapes.
Her team deliberately shunned a standardized group of things, inviting buyers to jumble and personalize the rich and banal as far as possible. Estrid’s success was assured by her rare talent and generosity of spirit to spot and tirelessly promote a unique stable of contemporary design talent.
Architecture and furniture design had a happy cross-over in the reach for total-design, and Estrid like other visionary Scandinavian retailers, commissioned pieces for their in-house range.
She partnered with Swedish functionalist architects Uno Åhrén and Björn Trägårdh, and pursued Austrian architect Josef Frank, whom she hired into the firm in 1934.
Frank and Erikson would become an enduring partnership delivering furniture and textiles that would define the brand for a worldwide audience - supping up these jewels in glossy magazine photo-shoots styled by Estrid.
Josef Frank regarded tubular steel as ‘a threat to humanity’. His enveloping, handsome 2080 rmchair c1940 with its ball feet in a range of gorgeous rich fantasy florals (also by Frank and inspired by William Morris), is my must have for this year, once I can magic up the €2,700 for the frame alone.
Several of his flirtatious wallpapers are available in distemper prints. When Estrid turned 50 in 1944, Frank, then living in Manhattan, gave her what this brilliant girl really wanted – 50 of his textile designs. His delightful design for upholstered egg holders in two sizes start at just €8 together with bags, napkins, runners, lamp-shades and more.
Estrid’s ability to combine the culturally comfortable of the time with bold emerging modernism is something the store still relishes in its collection of the classic and new, today.
Take a look at the Shadow Play collection from Finnish designer Harri Koskinen b1970, founder of Friends of Industry.
Estrid was an ‘artistically inclined producer’ according to the Svenskt team, and the firm still reach out to the best of European creatives for the store’s fare. Estrid’s own work is highly affordable and oddly up to date.
My choice would be her gold plated Candle Ring, to which you can add jewels, from €24. Take a look through the Svenskt Tenn magazine while you’re online.
Joseph Frank’s 13 Fantasty Houses drawn up in 1947 illustrate the architecture of a delightful dream estate, his ‘peaceful whole’ sadly never to be realised.
For an experience of the Svenskt Tenn lifestyle and tradition take tea or even champagne at the ST Tea Room, Strandvägen 5, Stockholm. Flights from Dublin to Stockholm in May from Norwegian Airlines, €330, norwegian.com. svenskttenn.se.
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