Beauty for all

Light homes, the colours of folk art and the lines of Art Nouveau: around 1900 Sweden got its first great design ideas.

Carl and Karin Larsson's home in Sundborn and Ellen Key's Beauty for All, both from 1899, offered the image of a light, simple and personal home as a counter-image to the dark bourgeois apartments. The colours and textiles of folk art inspired, and the Friends of Handicraft, founded in 1874, renewed the art of weaving.

Art Nouveau came to Sweden through the porcelain factories and glassworks. Alf Wallander at Rörstrand made vases with flowers and women's faces in relief, and Gustavsberg and Kosta made art wares. The Stockholm Exhibition of 1897 showed the new ambitions of industry and the decorative arts.