Karin Larsson
The designer behind Lilla Hyttnäs.
Karin Larsson trained as a painter but devoted herself to textiles, furniture and interior design in Sundborn. Her design language shapes the image of the Swedish home.
Karin Larsson was born Karin Bergöö in 1859 in Hallsberg. She studied at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm in the late 1870s and then travelled to France to continue her training as a painter. At the artists’ colony in Grez-sur-Loing she met Carl Larsson. They married in 1883.
After her marriage she largely stopped painting. Instead the home became her means of artistic expression. When in 1888 the couple were given the house Lilla Hyttnäs in Sundborn by her father, she became the driving force behind its interior. She designed furniture, wove, embroidered and sewed.
Karin Larsson’s textiles were very modern for their time. She used strong colours and simple geometric patterns, inspired both by Swedish folk art and by Japanese design. She also sewed practical and comfortable clothes for herself and the children, influenced by the dress reform movement of the day.
The couple had eight children. Karin often appears in Carl Larsson’s watercolours, but her own contribution long remained invisible. It was she who created much of the setting that he made famous in the book A Home.
Karin Larsson died in 1928. In recent years research has highlighted her as an independent designer and as a pioneer of what later came to be called Swedish design. Her work can be seen at the Carl Larsson House in Sundborn.