DOMESTIC BLISS
Discover Josef Frank’s unexpectedly colourful and upbeat fabrics and furnishings
Mid-century modernism filled with light and colour
Modernism, especially the mid-century variety, is known for its utilitarianism, practicality and simplicity of form. You won’t find much upholstery among the classics of modernist seating – and what there is is sober and understated. Plain material dominates, and even when pattern is used – on curtains or rugs – abstract motifs prevail. To the cutting-edge sensibilities of the time, a bright floral print was a definite no-no.
Which is why, among the canon of 20th-century architects, Josef Frank is such an anomaly. Like many of his peers, he approached a house as an all-encompassing work of art – as well as devising the exterior structure, he envisaged the contents, from statement lighting to the smallest of side tables. Born in Austria in 1885, he co-founded the Vienna School of Architecture, before emigrating to Sweden in 1933, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life.
Comfort was of perennial concern to Frank, partly because he thought that if his customers felt literally at ease with his designs, they would buy them. His output was remarkably catholic, jumping between styles but with a common thread – he was unable to resist embellishment, something that other modernists shunned. He put bun feet on his tables, turned legs on his chairs and covered his sofas in an exuberance of fabric.
Frank’s free-flowing, swirling patterns from the 1930s and 1940s are bursting with ripe fruits, neon hues and curling floral motifs that still feel eyepoppingly bold. A new exhibition gathers together some 160 of his textiles, alongside sketches for furniture and room interiors. It’s a riot of untrammelled creativity that explores how even the simplest trappings of domestic life can be joyously, extraordinarily original.
catriona gray
‘Josef Frank: Patterns-Furniture-Painting’ is at the Fashion and Textile Museum (020 7407 8664; www.ftmlondon.org) from 28 January to 7 May.