Not All Scandinavian Design is Minimalist

Stockholm’s ubiquitous, pared-back aesthetic
is being defrosted — by an infusion of
surprisingly colorful, lushly textured Old World design.

Wanderlust
By ALEXA BRAZILIAN FEB. 16, 2017

Stepping into the Stockholm design shop Layered, you might wonder if you had inadvertently crossed the border of Sweden into another country. Housed in an ornate 500-year-old building, the space is all marble pillars and gold scalloped moldings, with walls painted in deep turquoise and salmon. Antique fringed lamps mingle with furniture covered in dusty pink and marine blue velvets, and surrealist carpeting covers the floors. Where is the purely functional, the blond wood, the stark white walls?

In fact, this design is as Swedish as minimalism. Inside Stockholm’s hotels, restaurants and shops, a slow return to the more colorful, often forgotten periods in the country’s design history can be seen — a vibrant emulsion of the gilded trappings of the 18th-century court of King Gustav III, the wild textiles and individuality of spirit espoused by the textile designer Josef Frank and a movement known as “Swedish Grace.” The latter style is an appealing pastiche of Nordic folk motifs and ornate craftsmanship that arose around the same time as Art Deco (and, as it happens, was named by Philip Morton Shand, the journalist grandfather of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall). The furniture and ceramics heralding Swedish Grace made their debut at the world’s fair in Paris in 1925, and were later exhibited — and widely celebrated — at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. By the ’30s, however, the movement was eclipsed, in Sweden as well as internationally, by functionalism and the politicized mass production of home furnishings (see Ikea). Forever after, the words “Scandinavian design” equaled minimalism.

More NYT (9 August 2017)