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Expressive storage – for the sake of art
Expressive storage – for the sake of art
The 1980s marked a shift in design, moving away from strict functionalism toward postmodernism. The focus turned from utility to artistic expression, with bold designs like Ettore Sottsass’s Carlton bookshelf challenging traditional ideas of function. Modernist architect Josef Frank did the same long before, seamlessly blending artistry with practicality to create timeless storage pieces. Later, Swedish designers such as Olle Anderson and Emma Wikner brought their own perspectives to cabinet design, combining aesthetics with craftsmanship. This article looks at how these designers approached furniture as both functional objects and works of art.
1980s – is said to be the death of functionalism and the birth of postmodernism. A paradigm shift in the international design community, where the overall perspective changed from creating useful items in favor of the artistic objects. The modernistic mantra “less is more” was replaced by “less is bore!” Personally, being marinated in the ideology of modernism, it took me a few years to understand and embrace the energy of the new aesthetic first introduced by Italian architects and designers. In this case, you can say I was not among the early adopters.
During a guided tour at the Museum of Furniture Studies, a visitor asked me: “How can you justify the Carlton bookshelf by Ettore Sottsass from a functional point of view?” I answered: If you do not include the aesthetic functionality, I can not. This object is a piece of art, when you place a book on the shelf, the artistic impact will fade. “L´art pour L´art” as you would say in France. However, the Carlon bookshelf is one of the museum’s foremost iconic objects, embodying the design wonder of 1980s Italy. It was designed in 1981 by Ettore Sottsass (1917-2007) and launched by Memphis Milano the same year.
Unlike the Carlton bookshelf, the Model 2237 Cabinet, designed in 1957 by the Austrian-Swedish architect Josef Frank (1885-1967), is a useful piece of art. The symmetrically composed drawers in different sizes serve their purpose of hiding personal treasures as well as containing useful things. This cabinet is undoubtedly a masterpiece by one of the most prominent architects of the 2000th century. Frank’s artistry, combined with a deep sense of practicality, is what made him so outstanding among contemporary designers. Although he was a modernist, Frank did not fully embrace the ideology; he considered it to be cold and programmatic. He introduced warmth in the choice of materials, combined with colors and the joy of patterns that gave his design a unique touch.
Frank designed his cabinets with tall legs so that they would not hide the floor lines of the room. The same idea was used by Olle Anderson (b.1939) when designing his first artistic cabinet, Confetti, in 1982. Anderson was one of Sweden's strongest advocates for postmodern design ideology. As a leading architect, Anderson's furniture design became a vital part of his interiors, often as aesthetic exclamation marks. The prototype of the Confetti cabinet was crafted by the company Klaesons and artistically painted by hand by Anderson himself. Later on, it was industrially manufactured in a limited edition by the Swedish company Horreds.
In 2022 the Museum of Furniture Studies conducted its second edition of Ex-Works, a project highlighting design students’ degree projects. Here, the museum collaborated with five Swedish design colleges, Konstfack being one of them. Their student Emma Wikner (b.1997) was one of the attending young designers. Her cabinet, called Vita Sannar, received much attention from the visitors, not according to its function but to the artistically and technically exquisite expression. The wave pattern, seamlessly following all sides of the cabinet, derives from the bottom sand pattern of Sweden’s largest lake, Vänern. Here, Wikner transformed a photo via a 3D sketch to program a CNC machine to mill the surface of the MDF board. This takes an understanding of both mathematics and techniques out of the ordinary.
In 2023, I had the pleasure of interviewing Emma Wikner about her inspiring project. Watch the full interview here.
Article written by Lars Bülow
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