Röhsska Museum
A museum of crafts and design in dark red brick. Westman drew freely on medieval and vernacular forms, with steep roofs, small windows and care lavished on every detail. The building expresses National Romanticism’s faith in craftsmanship.
The Röhsska Museum came about through donations from the brothers Wilhelm and August Röhss, members of a wealthy Gothenburg merchant family. The money was to fund a museum of crafts and industrial design, at a time when there was a drive to raise the quality of Swedish everyday goods. Carl Westman was commissioned to design the building, which was erected on Vasagatan and opened in 1916. Westman was one of the leading architects of National Romanticism and was working on the Courthouse in Stockholm at the same time. He chose a dark, hand-made brick and a restrained form in which the surface of the material itself was the main point. The building was meant to demonstrate in itself what good craftsmanship was, and bricklayers, smiths and joiners were therefore given ample scope.
The building is closed and heavy towards the outside, with a high, steep roof, small windows and a façade in which the irregular colour variations of the brick enliven the surface. The forms are borrowed freely from medieval castles and churches and from Swedish vernacular architecture, but without copying any particular model. The entrance on the street is marked by carefully designed details, and the gates and fittings are of wrought iron. The size and placing of the windows follow the needs of the rooms rather than strict symmetry. The interior was originally intended to show the objects in a calm, homely setting, and the rooms had an intimacy quite different from the large, palatial museums of the day. In this way the building itself became part of the collection.
Over time the collections have grown considerably, and the museum has been remodelled internally several times to accommodate new ways of displaying them. Today Röhsska is Sweden’s museum of design and crafts, with a large collection of Swedish and international glass, furniture, textiles and fashion, as well as a significant collection of East Asian art. The building is regarded as one of the most important works of National Romanticism in Gothenburg. It reflects the period’s belief in craftsmanship as the basis of good design, an idea later taken up by the Swedish Society of Crafts and Design in its campaign for more beautiful everyday goods. In this way the building looks both back to the craft tradition and forward to the breakthrough of Swedish design in the mid-20th century.