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Perfect imperfectionHow one writer fell for Japanese ceramics— EXPAT LIVES PAGE 10
It’s a different business model,” says
Veerasamy, who previously worked
for a fast-turnover high-street chain.
“In regular retail everything is so
quick. Here we never talk about price
— we talk about craft.”
The challenge for companies like
Svenskt Tenn is to navigate two roles:
Instagram-friendly emporium for a
generation of global, informed con-
sumers — and museum. Overexploit
their archives, and they risk damaging
the mystique.Embellishment, colour, high design
“We saw the trend coming about four
years ago,” says Lisa Montague, chief
executive of Walker Greenbank, the
luxury interiors and furnishings
group, whose heritage brands include
Morris & Co. “This is the beginning of
a long cycle of design: embellishment,
colour, high design — the minimalist
trend is turning.”
The group owns the rights to Wil-
liam Morris’s Victorian fabric and
wallpaper designs, and Morris & Co is
a descendant of the interiors business
founded in 1861 by William Morris — a
design hero of Josef Frank — as the
embodiment of the English Arts and
Crafts movement. Like his Austrian
admirer, Morris was an enthusiastic
embellisher of wallpaper and fabric
with elaborate floral motifs. The origi-
nal Morris & Co opened in 1875 and
closed in 1940, but the brand — and its
archives — are still big business.
Like at Svenskt Tenn, Morris & Co’s
precious archives are regarded as anContinued on page 2E
strid Ericson was just 30
when she invested a small
inheritance, opening a
Stockholm workshop selling
expensive decorative pew-
terware. It was a big risk for a young
female designer in 1924. The Swedish
entrepreneur had thoroughly modern
principles: she would sell only high-
quality, handmade items and would
adhere to the codes of modernism and
functionalism — still a nascent design
movement. Women had won the right
to vote just three years earlier. Would
anyone take Ericson and her high-
minded venture seriously?
Three years later, Ericson was
successful enough to open a shop on
the upmarket Strandvägen. She
expanded into furniture and home-
ware, and eventually built an archive
of 160 original, intricate and colourful
fabric designs that defy conventional
ideas about Scandinavian design.
Today, Svenskt Tenn (translation:
Swedish pewter) is not only still trading
on Strandvägen, it is also back in vogue
— thanks to maximalism, the exuber-
ant, eclectic (some might say cluttered)
aesthetic championed by a new genera-
tion of interiors experts and designers.
They include Italy’s Martina Mondadori
Sartogo, Sweden’s Beata Heuman and
British designers Rachel Chudley and
Luke Edward Hall, the FT columnist.
The company still has one shop, but
its online and B2B arms are supporting a
growing global market, backed by the
inevitable army of Instagram followers.
Just under 20 per cent of Svenskt Tenn’s
sales are online — up from about 15 per
cent a year ago — and digital turnoverThe venerable Swedish
store Svenskt Tenn is back
in vogue almost a century
after it was founded by
Estrid Ericson. Maria
Veerasamy, its CEO, and
Thommy Bindefeld,
creative director (above)
preside over the
Stockholm showroom,
a 1,300 sq m space that is
part-shop, part-museum
and cultural centre.
Estrid Ericson’s old office,
untouched from when
she last worked there, is
behind glass in the
museum section (top
right and bottom left).
Ericson with Josef Frank
(right, in 1965), the
Viennese architect
and interior designer
who became her
business partner
Felix Odell for the FT60s,” says Veerasamy, 55, who pre-
sided over the company’s digital
expansion. “Those were hard times
because she had an entirely different
style from what was in fashion. But
she kept the style.”
E v e n n o w,
when collaborat-
in g w i t h n e w
designers or pur-
s u i n g o n l i n e
sales, Veerasamy
says she feels the
weight of Estrid’s
principles: “I am
always trying to
balance the com-
mercial and his-
torical parts of the business.”
Today, Ericson’s shop has expanded
into the buildings on either side of the
original premises and over three
floors, first in the 1980s and again a
decade ago. This 1,300 sq m space is
part-shop, part-museum and cultural
centre. “We never think short-term.rose nearly 27 per cent over the same
period. Overall sales are up nearly 10
per cent. “Our best year ever,” says chief
executive Maria Veerasamy. Maximal-
ism is a growing market.
There is another term for Svenskt
Tenn’s style: accidentalism, coined by
Josef Frank, the Viennese architect
and designer who joined Ericson’s
business in the 1930s. Patterns, col-
ours and furniture are assembled with
an artful carelessness, as if they just
happened to be there. In reality, it is
all very deliberate.
Svenskt Tenn is one of a wave of Euro-
pean heritage companies — large and
small — whose fortunes are revived
thanks to social media, digital com-
merce, a yearning for provenance and a
shift in consumer tastes from minimal-
ism to maximalism (or accidentalism).
From Morris & Co in the UK, whose
highly decorative Victorian fabrics and
prints are back in fashion in Europe, the
US and Asia, to the pottery manufactur-
ers of Staffordshire and the small craftMad maximalism
Design| As pared-back minimalism gives way to the exuberant, the elaborate
and the artfully careless, heritage brands are enjoying a resurgence. ByHelen Barrett
workshops who supply established
retailers, demand for elaborate design is
breathing new life into old — and some-
times precarious — businesses.
In the case of Svenskt Tenn, there is a
social mission to protect, too. All that
ornamental wallpa-
per and bespoke fur-
niture funds scien-
tific research into
biomedicine, genet-
ics, environmental
challenges and phar-
maceuticals through
its owner, the Beijer
Foundation, the
organisation to
which Ericson sold
Svenskt Tenn in 1975. All the company’s
profits go to the foundation. Since 2007,
it has contributed nearly $20m — about
a third of the foundation’s income.
But business has not always been
brisk. During the mid-century dec-
ades of cool modernity, its style was
out. “Estrid survived the 40s, 50s andFEBRUARY 22 2020 Section:Weekend Time: 19/2/2020 - 17: 59 User: rosalind.sykes Page Name: RES1, Part,Page,Edition: RES, 1, 1