"Ten Swedish Designers, Thirty Years On"
2001-03-29 until 2001-08-12
National Museum
Stockholm, , SE

Thirty years ago, ten Swedish designers banded together to launch a company producing printed textiles with an emphatically artistic flavour. Ten Swedish Designers. The Ten have become three, but their imprint on textile design has not diminished. Ten individual textile designers, exhausted by the reluctance of the late-1960s textile industry to promote ambitious design, took their bull by the horns and formed Ten Swedish Designers in 1970. Working together proved stimulating - and they retained control over their patterns from sketch to print to marketing. The original Ten were: Gunila Axén, Britt Marie Christoffersson, Carl-Johan De Geer, Lotta Hagerman, Tage Möller, Birgitta Hahn, Ingela Håkansson, Susanne Grundell, Tom Hedqvist and Inez Svensson.

In 1987, the Ten were reduced to five; today to three: Birgitta Hahn, Ingela Håkansson and Tom Hedqvist.

Ten Swedish Designers quickly made a name for itself and was successful both at home and on a wider market abroad. Each member has a distinctive style within a common aesthetic framework. Their co-ordinated collections present brashly coloured, graphically powerful patterns, printed by Borås Wäfveri.

Collections have been produced for IKEA, Rörstrand and others. Several designs have gone to wallpaper, produced by Duro. Their textiles have been been used to conceptually renew furniture and interior design, as well as for clothes and a rich variety of functional small objects.

Ten Swedish Designers has promoted its collections with its own, arresting posters. Through decorative art and printed fabrics, they have eased access to the design language of modernism accessible for all.

IMAGE:
10-Group
Cushions, the first collection, 1972
Photo by Tiogruppen
240x160 mm, 288 dpi

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for Sweden

Other Important Exhibitions in Stockholm