Oskar Wlach, J.T. Kalmar, Haus & Garten, Svenskt Tenn

Kalmar was founded in Vienna in 1881 by Julius August Kalmar as a producer of handcrafted metal objects. His son Julius Theodor Kalmar, known as J.T. Kalmar, took over in 1913 and transformed the company into an important modern lighting manufacturer. Trained in Birmingham and at the Vienna School of Applied Arts under Josef Hoffmann, J.T. Kalmar collaborated with architects including Josef Frank, Oskar Wlach, Ernst Plischke and Oswald Haerdtl.

But the term “svenskt tenn” actually means “Swedish pewter,” and the very first goods the company sold were stylish pewter objects, such as an elegant 1927 candelabra found in the collection of the Saint Louis Art Museum, or a sleek, understated mirror in the collection of the National Museum of Fine Arts. These pieces were designed to appeal to discerning but price-conscious shoppers in 1920s-era Stockholm. Art teacher and interior designer Estrid Ericson (1894–1981) partnered with pewter artisan Nils Fougstedt (1881–1954) to establish Svenskt Tenn in 1924, and their creations quickly gained a reputation for high quality and affordability, winning a gold medal at the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris in 1925 — the design fair that brought global attention to the Art Deco style.

Austrian, 1885-1967 Austrian architect and furniture and fabric designer Josef Frank was a leading voice for a gentle, humane modernism. His advocacy of warm, comfortable, eclectically styled environments was highly influential in his adopted country of Sweden, and it’s now widely regarded as a harbinger of the backlash against doctrinaire modernism and the embrace of the homespun that occurred in the late 1960s. The son of a successful Viennese textile manufacturer, Frank studied architecture at Vienna University of Technology, graduating in 1910.