Astrid Sampe

The modernist of textiles.

Astrid Sampe led NK's Textilkammare and renewed Swedish textile design with modern patterns and collaborations with artists.

Astrid Sampe was born in Stockholm in 1909. Her parents ran a textile business, and she grew up surrounded by fabrics. She studied at Konstfack in Stockholm and at the Royal College of Art in London in the early 1930s, where she was influenced by modern English textile art.

In 1936 she began working at the NK department store in Stockholm, and the following year she was put in charge of NK's Textilkammare, a design studio for fabrics and rugs. She remained there until 1971. Under her leadership the studio became a centre of modern Swedish textile design. She commissioned young designers and artists, among them Stig Lindberg, Viola Gråsten and Olle Baertling, to create patterns for printed fabrics.

Her own patterns are often geometric and abstract, in clear colours and taut rhythms. She also designed rugs, towels and textiles for public spaces, and her linen tea towels became very widespread. She was interested in new materials and techniques and is said to have experimented with computer-generated patterns in the 1960s.

Sampe worked with international manufacturers and was an ambassador for Swedish design. She died in 2002. Today she is regarded as one of the most important figures in Swedish post-war design, both as a designer and as the person who opened the door to a new generation of textile artists.

• Scandinavian design and mid-century
• The post-war era and Concretism