Why interior designers adore Josef Frank – and how to use his designs at home
Few individual designers have such an enduring legacy as Josef Frank, who fled from his native Austria to Sweden in the 1930s and became involved with the now-iconic homewares shop Svenskt Tenn not long after it was founded. The fabrics he designed for the shop are instantly recognisable: each design in the vast collection is characterised by a distinctive combination of eclectic colour schemes and bold floral prints. It's hard to imagine how unusual they were at the time, as the clean lines and understated forms of modernism dominated the design world. Frank's work received lukewarm reviews from the press in Sweden when it first came out, but went on to become a defining element of Swedish culture.
Frank was already well-established as a designer before he came to Stockholm. In Vienna he had designed for Haus & Garten, a company that he founded in 1925. As well as working for wealthy clients, he designed affordable workers' apartments that offered plenty of light, air, and attractive views. This emphasis on accessibility and comfort remained a signature of his work. As an immigrant to Sweden later, once he had escaped the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Vienna with his Swedish wife Anna, he initially found looking for work difficult. However, a young art teacher, Estrid Ericson, had opened Svenskt Tenn in Stockholm in 1924, and offered him the chance to work for her shop. Together Frank and Ericson created distinctive patterns, colours and furniture that were fun and totally unintimidating. In addition to fabric, Frank's prodigious also output included chairs, sofas, lamps, bowls, vases, trays, tables, stool and cabinets. Altogether he left behind 2,000 furniture sketches and about 160 textile designs.
Frank's textile designs are full of whimsical tropical flowers, ferns, birds and insects, oversized maps and a sense of adventure. Bold and vivid as they are, the patterns appear again and again in the houses we feature on our pages, and are surprisingly versatile and easy to use. Martin Brudnizki, no stranger to a lively pattern, sees Frank's unique visual language as part of an essentially Swedish tradition. "It's a distinctly Swedish thing to take classical motifs and abstract them to create more modern and simple lines. You can see this in how Josef Frank re-interpreted botanical patterns," he explains. "Frank brought something to Sweden that we didn't have," adds Maria Wiberg, Curator of the Millesgården Museum, which houses much of his work. "His work makes you happy."
Unlike many designers, Frank relished the prospect of clients moving things around to suit daily life. "The house is not a work of art, simply a place where one lives," he once wrote. So his work lends itself to casual mixing with disperate styles. Ilse Crawford, a British interior designer and admirer, explains that "Frank was interested in liveability, and the idea of a humanistic architecture that grew with its inhabitants. His thinking on design was insightful, human-centered and extremely relevant for our times."
Svenskt Tenn in Stockholm still owns all Frank's designs, and they are made to his instructions; producing the 160 fabrics that he designed in rotation. 45 of the fabrics are produced and sold at any one time. Swedish designer Beata Heuman calls Frank perhaps her most important design influence. “His designs pushed boundaries," she says, "yet they are timeless and still totally relevant today. I look at them constantly and I just want to know how he did it!”
Michael Sinclair1/7Beata Heuman uses Frank's designs in many of her projects, including this musician's house in London. The corner of the play area is softened by a large armchair in Josef Frank's 'Baranquilla, with an Original BTC light and a side table from The Conran Shop, in front of a vintage wavy wooden screen.
Michael Sinclair2/7In the music room of the same house by Beata Heuman, the curtains are in Josef Frank's 'Anakreon'.
Photography: Read McKendree | Styling: Mieke ten Have3/7There is something about Frank's designs that sits beautifully in rustic cottages and cabins. In this interior designer's 18th-century house in Connecticut, there are plenty of his patterns, including the incredibly cheerful 'Varklocker' wallpaper in the bedroom, which sits well with an IKEA duvet cover and a vintage Hudson Bay blanket.
Meta Coleman4/7Josef Frank's 'Under Ekvatorn' pattern covers the sofa in this Utah cottage by Meta Coleman. Using one of Frank's patterns on a sofa in an otherwise plain room is an easy way to incorporate them.
Meta Coleman5/7The much-loved 'Klöverblad' wallpaper makes for a fresh, spring-like backdrop to the bathroom in the same Utah cottage by Meta Coleman.
Paul Massey6/7Marie-Louise Sjögren’s historic house on the Stockholm archipelago is a masterclass in Scandinavian style that doesn't feel too predictable. When it came to the decoration, she had a clear vision: ‘I wanted the house to almost feel as if it had been standing still for 100 years.’ In one of the bedrooms, the curtains around the bath are in ‘Textile Anakreon’ linen by Josef Frank.
Matt Clayton7/7‘Tulpaner’ is a particularly cheerful design of Frank's, and often pops up on the pages of House & Garden. Here interior designer Cath Beckett, co-founder of Yellow London, has used it in the bedroom of her own London flat.
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