page_title: Svenskt Tenn
section_title: 1924–1999
hierarchical_section_title: Svenskt Tenn / History / 1924–1999
caption_attribution_description: Svenska: Millesgården på Lidingö, Annes hus, vardagsrummet
context_page_description: Svenskt Tenn [English: Swedish Pewter] is a Swedish interior design store, founded in 1924 in Stockholm by Estrid Ericson, an art teacher and pewter artist from Hjo, Sweden. Since 1928, the company has been appointed as a royal warrant. Today, it is owned by the Kjell and Märta Beijer Foundation and all profit generated is donated to research in areas such as environmental sustainability, genetics, biomedicine and pharmaceuticals.
context_section_description: Ericson's father's inheritance served as seed capital for starting the company. Together with pewter artist Nils Fougstedt, she produced modern pewter objects and thus Svenskt Tenn quickly gained recognition as a brand of quality, eventually leading to a gold medal at the 1925 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels in Paris. Further successes in the USA were following, beginning in 1927 with an exhibition of Swedish design at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York that also toured to Chicago and Detroit. As a result of her success, in 1927, the store moved from Smålandsgatan to larger premises on Strandvägen, where it is still located today.
  At that time, the Swedish functionalist architects Uno Åhrén and Björn Trägårdh started to design for the company. In 1932, Ericson ordered the first furniture designs from the already well-established Austrian architect Josef Frank. Two years later, she hired Frank after he fled the burgeoning Nazism in Austria for Sweden at the age of 50 together with his Swedish wife Anna.
  Svenskt Tenn's exhibition room at the world exhibitions in Paris (“Exposition des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne”) in 1937 and New York in 1939 was completely contrary to the ideal of the time with its bold contrasts in materials, colours and prints. The duo of Frank and Ericson received a great deal of attention and were quickly associated with the expression “Swedish Modern”.
  Over time, the designer duo won many notable clients. In 1932, Sigvard Oskar Bernadotte commissioned Svenskt Tenn for a new interior design of his residence. Similarly, Ericson and Frank were commissioned to design the house of Anne Hedmark (Annes Hus) on the site of the Swedish sculptor Carl Milles’s studio and home.
  During the Second World War, Josef Frank was forced into exile yet again. At the height of the war he fled to Manhattan, resulting in a number of new textile designs between 1941 and 1946. Sweden’s Prince Eugen was among those who took a great delight in them; he felt that the new designs actually exceeded those of the legendary print designer and Frank role model, William Morris.
  After Frank died in 1967, Ericson ran the daily operations of the business until 1975. At the age of 81, she sold the company to the Kjell and Märta Beijer Foundation, which provides research grants within ecology, medicine and the preservation of Swedish interior design tradition. Ericson, however, remained as the managing director of the company. In 1979, Ann Wall took over her role and transformed Svenskt Tenn into a profitable business by modernising the product range, administration and organization, as well as renewing the marketing concept. Collaborations with selected new designers, as well as art and design schools, were also established under her direction.
caption: A living room, designed by Ericson and Frank, situated in the curator's building, called Annes Hus, which was built and constructed by Evert Milles in Stockholm's Millesgården on the island of Lidingö.
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