1924–1999 in Stockholm's
Millesgården on the island of
Lidingö. on the occasion of the 80th birthday of Svenskt Tenn and in memory of Estrid Ericson. 48 in
Norrmalm. ,
Skåne. Ericson's father's inheritance served as seed capital for starting the company. With pewter artist as a close colleague, Estrid Ericson 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. 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. Estrid Ericson and Josef Frank jointly developed the interior design philosophy that Svenskt Tenn remains well known for today. In 1939, Estrid Ericson published her own writing on interior design, a publication she dubbed ”Interior Catechism”. Josef Frank developed his own philosophy called ”Accidentism” – an idea of that ”we should design our surroundings as if they originated by chance. This, he considered to be true for cities as well as living rooms. After Frank died in 1967, Ericson Ericson continued to run 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. Frank had also designed a number of summer houses in that area. In 2009,
Prince Carl Philip of Sweden debuted a silver cutlery collection at Svenskt Tenn. The following year, he presented a fireplace screen that he had co-designed. Frank's designs are highly esteemed not the least among today's young and established designers and his textiles are a source of inspiration for many contemporary print designers both in Sweden and other countries. A famous fan of Frank is
Apple designer
Marc Newson. Many of Franks furniture designs can be found in
Swedish embassies around the globe, such as in
Algiers and even the
Consulate General residence in New York. At auction, Frank's and Ericson's designs fetch high prices and can be found in the collections of the
Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) and the
National Museum of Stockholm. In 2022, auction house Bukowskis sold Josef Frank’s ”Apskåpet” (’The Monkey Cabinet’) for a record final price of SEK 4,625 000 – the highest price for a Swedish 20th-century furniture ever sold at auction. In 2014, Svenskt Tenn initiated an annual design scholarship, given to a graduate student at Stockholm’s Beckmans College of Design. It is one of three collaborations between Svenskt Tenn and the school, alongside a glass-design scholarship and a returning interdisciplinary project in which Visual Communication students at Beckmans interpret research from the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics. In 2024, Svenskt Tenn celebrated 100 years. The jubilee was honoured with a series of archival reintroductions as well as an extensive jubilee exhibition at the Liljevalchs ‘kunsthalle’ in Stockholm. In 2025, Phaidon published the 400-page monograph
Svenskt Tenn: Interiors, edited by Nina Stritzler-Levine. The book is the first extensive publication to ever be published about Svenskt Tenn. == Craftsmanship ==