Josef Frank was an Austrian-born architect and designer known for his contributions to the Swedish interior firm Svenskt Tenn. His furniture, fabrics, and lighting are both elegant and whimsical. Frank worked as an architect while in Austria and designed furniture and accessories for the firm Haus und Garten. Frank helped to define modern Viennese design through his design principles, and by collaborating with other Austrian architects. This collaboration culminated in the “Neues Weiner Wolmen”, or “New Viennese Living” group. The group started in the 1920s and rejected regimented ways of arranging interiors. For example, they believed that a home should be comprised of many different objects, rather than furniture suites; items should look unique but remain adaptable.
Josef Frank decided to leave Austria in 1933, following the rise of Nazism. His wife, Anna, was Swedish. Estrid Ericsson first ordered furniture designed by Josef Frank in 1932, so it was natural that Frank took a job with Svenskt Tenn in 1934. Although Frank and Ericsson’s collaboration was successful, Frank was still committed to architecture; he moved to New York in 1938 to pursue public housing projects. This endeavor was not fruitful, but he worked as a professor at the New School and stayed in New York until 1946. He began designing for Svenskt Tenn again the same year and remained with them until his retirement.
Svenskt Tenn had produced subdued, functionalist pieces before Ericsson hired Frank. They sold both furniture and objects, but most of their pieces were made of pewter, or pewter paired with darkly stained wood. Frank brought color and light to Svenskt Tenn. His work referenced traditional European furniture, but with a bolder edge. He continued to design based on the principles he established with New Viennese Living but came to coin his design approach “Accidentalism”. In a 1956 essay for the Swedish magazine Form, he wrote “we should design our surroundings as if they originated by chance.”. He rejected modernism’s uniformity and proposed a future in which people do not decorate based on a set of rules, but instead choose diverse objects and arrange them functionally. Josef Frank’s textiles, furniture, and lighting illustrate Frank’s ingenuity and push-back against straight-laced modernism.
Find items by Josef Frank and other Svenskt Tenn designers here.
Literature:
Long, Christopher. “Josef Frank’s Modernist Vision: ‘Accidentism’.” Places Journal, 1 Feb. 2018, placesjournal.org/article/josef-franks-modernist-vision-accidentism/?cn-reloaded=1.
Rawsthorn, Alice. “Josef Frank: Celebrating the Anti-Design Designer.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 19 Jan. 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/01/20/arts/design/josef-frank-celebrating-the-anti-design-designer.html.
