Scandinavian Textile Designers and the Prints They Made Famous

Scandinavian textile design has two faces. One is spare and graphic, with a few flat shapes in strong color. The other is lush, even crowded, with flowers and animals filling every inch. Both come from the same countries, and the designers below show how far apart they can sit. This post is about the people; the broader look is in our Scandinavian pattern design guide.

Josef Frank. Frank, an Austrian-born architect, moved to Sweden in 1933 and designed furniture and textiles for the Stockholm firm Svenskt Tenn. His prints are botanical and painterly, with flowers, fruit and foliage drawn in watercolor and packed into dense repeats. He drew some of his best-known patterns during the years he spent living in New York, including Manhattan. Svenskt Tenn still prints his designs. More in famous textile designers.

Märta Måås-Fjetterström (1873-1941). She founded the weaving studio that bears her name in Båstad in 1919. It is known for flatwoven rugs and hangings in clear, restrained geometry, and it kept hand weaving alive as a design practice.

Astrid Sampe (1909-2002). She led the textile studio at the Stockholm department store Nordiska Kompaniet from the late 1930s, and she brought in artists and architects to draw patterns for printed cloth. She is a good case study in curating a collection.

Marimekko. Founded in 1951, the Helsinki company was built on large, flat-color prints cut into simple dresses. Maija Isola drew the poppy print Unikko in 1964, in defiance of an early house rule against florals. The poppy is a handful of flat shapes at huge scale, a black center and a few petals. Marimekko's early prints rarely use shading or detail, and the bold colors do the work.

Vuokko Nurmesniemi also designed early Marimekko prints, known for striking stripes and color blocks, and later started her own company. The Japanese designer Fujiwo Ishimoto joined Marimekko in the 1970s and became known for bold nature motifs.

Frida Hansen (1855-1931). The Norwegian textile artist patented a transparent weaving technique in 1897. In it, areas of the warp are left open so tapestry images appear to float in air. She exhibited at the Paris World's Fair of 1900. Norwegian folk traditions also supply motifs that designers still use, from rosemaling flowers to the star on Selbu mittens; see our Fair Isle knitting patterns for the stranded-knitting relatives.

Arne Jacobsen. Known as an architect and chair designer, Jacobsen also drew printed textiles in the 1940s, with bold botanical and graphic repeats. The work shows how Nordic architects treated pattern as part of a room.

• Nature, simplified or celebrated. Poppies, leaves and berries recur, either flattened (Marimekko) or lavish (Frank).
• Scale as a decision. Isola's poppy is bigger than a dinner plate; Frank's flowers are layered in different sizes.
• Daily use. The cloth was made for curtains, tablecloths and dresses, not for display.

Svenskt Tenn's shop in Stockholm still sells Frank's prints, and Design Museum Helsinki is a good place to see how Finnish textiles developed. Even a short visit teaches something no screen can: how big these patterns really are when they hang in a room. A useful exercise is to pick one flower and draw it at three sizes, small, medium and giant, and see which scale gives your design its character.

For the flat-graphic route, draw three to five shapes at a size of 8 to 12 inches (20 to 30 cm) on a plain ground. For a Frank-style garden, mix three scales of flower, a few birds, and fill the gaps with small leaves.

The Norwegian patterns, minimalist patterns and floral patterns categories are the nearest starting points. With Browse Styles in Pattern Weaver you can pick from 44 categories and 5,700+ styles to begin either direction.