Ernst Spolén

The “Golden Hall” (Gyllene salen) in Stockholm City Hall is one of the most talked-about and depicted rooms of the twentieth century. The building and its extraordinary interior have become a symbol of Stockholm, Swedish Grace and the Nobel Banquet.

Ernst Spolén (1880–1974), was a Swedish architect, furniture designer, watercolour painter and writer. Spolén qualified from what was then the Chalmers technical school in 1903, after which he was employed by architects Torben Grut, Ernst Stenhammar and Ivar Tengbom. Spolén then worked directly under architect Ragnar Östberg,
including on the interior design and furniture design of Stockholm City Hall in 1911–1923. From 1916 onwards, Spolén was responsible for major interior design commissions and designed furniture for the Golden Hall and the Three Crowns Hall.

Furniture by Ernst Spolén has only rarely come onto the auction market. The cabinet in the auction was designed and produced as a proposal for the Golden Hall in Stockholm City Hall, which was opened in 1923. In the approximately seven years (1916–23) that it took to decorate and design and produce furniture for the City Hall, the style ideal shifted from national romanticism to classicism and Swedish Grace. This means that several of the pieces of furniture that the architects had designed with Ragnar Östberg, as the architect responsible for the City Hall, were no longer in keeping with the final plans. Over the course of the project, Östberg also corrected the proposed furniture for the interior of the City Hall as a whole on several occasions, vetoing furniture that had already been selected.

The cabinet in the auction is one of these proposed pieces of furniture for the Golden Hall, and thus a highly unusual example of furniture by Spolén which is not preserved in the City Hall today but has come onto the market. The cabinet was later exhibited at the association Verkstaden’s exhibition at Liljevalchs in 1920. Spolén’s idiosyncratic furniture from the City Hall is without equal and stands out thanks to its personal and expressive character. A contemporary critic, Erik Wettergren, described the interior in 1923 as follows: “… the kind of freedom that imbues the character of the City Hall. Östberg and Spolén have understood each other. With the same intensity, the same individual determination, they set out to solve every unique spatial problem, and they did not let go until its utmost character was evoked.”

During the planning of the City Hall, Östberg had far-reaching plans to depict all the phases of Stockholm’s history in its furniture. Östberg also advocated drawing inspiration from historic styles and other cultural spheres. In the middle of a raging World War, Spolén was sent on a trip to Denmark to gather inspiration and measure and study Ringsted church, Roskilde Cathedral, Glyptoteket and Rosenborg Castle in Copenhagen. The Renaissance and historic references that feature in the design of the cabinet and its richness of detail were probably derived from these inspiring journeys and the studies he made of churches, such as St Mark’s Basilica in Venice and Westminster Cathedral in London. At the same time, the cabinet has a modern character for its time, with its relief effects and intarsia motifs. This is a contrast we rarely see in other twentieth-century furniture. One of Östberg’s ideas behind the City Hall revolved around its theatrical impact, produced by clear contrasts, surprise and variation. This is an element that is typical of the furniture that Spolén designed for the City Hall.

Alongside the Swedish Society of Industrial Design, the architects and designers’ association Verkstaden was an important organisation in the field. Verkstaden’s members arranged their first exhibition at Liljevalchs Art Gallery in 1920 but the society was dissolved in 1924. Its members were young and renowned architects, many of whom later came to dominate their field, such as Gunnar Asplund, Carl Bergsten, David Blomberg, Harald Ericson, Sidney Gibson, Axel Einar Hjorth, Carl Hörvik, Sigurd Lewerentz, Carl Malmsten, Karl Norberg, Ture Ryberg, Axel Melchior Wernstedt and Uno Åhrén. As a contrast to the Swedish Society of Industrial Design’s Home Exhibition of 1917, Verkstaden’s members showed a series of interiors that made significant claims in terms of display, with exclusive crafts, expensive materials and interiors for an audience with greater purchasing power. Architect Gunnar Asplund’s “Wife’s room” from the 1920 exhibition has been written about and often depicted in literature.

Architect Carl Bergsten wrote a review in the periodical of the Swedish Society of Industrial Design entitled “Furniture and interior design at Verkstaden’s exhibition”. Of Spolén’s cabinet, which was placed in the art gallery’s colonnade, Bergsten wrote:

“In the sculpture hall, the same architect exhibited a large cabinet, borne by six sculpted figures. The cabinet is a particularly interesting and significant work, especially as far as its material design is concerned. Here, its sculptural design stands out, and one is surprised that the same artist, when engaged upon purely linear design, works with knife-sharp precision and pure Renaissance character, compared with which – when it comes to the sculpture – in the carrying figures, he completely loses this affinity, and alongside this otherwise so pure composition, he inserts grotesque figures of quite a naive peasant character. It is regrettable then that these figures fall outside the compass of the rest of the composition, as the cabinet is otherwise of considerable artistic value. The proportions are superb, and the treatment of the wood is of particular interest. The cabinet is made in oak, and the sections of the doors are milled across the structure of the wood, achieving a particularly interesting surface effect, further heightened by the painstaking application, sensitively carried out, of a light-brown stain. Inside, the cabinet and the doors have an amaranth veneer, whose beautiful purple colour forms an interesting contrast to the exterior. The effect of the interior is additionally heightened by an ingenious linear division of the door sections and sparing decoration of these in figured intarsia.”

It is likely that Bergsten was unaware of the fact that the cabinet was originally designed as a prototype for the Golden Hall in Stockholm City Hall. With its decoration strongly influenced by historic references and Östberg’s ideas of a theatrical impact gained by means of clear contrasts, surprise and variation, the unique character of the cabinet was something that many people found difficult to comprehend and contextualise.

Another critic, Erik Blomberg, also wrote about Spolén’s furniture. His piece in the journal of the Swedish Society of Industrial Design in 1923, provides another view of how Spolén’s furniture design was received in its day. The quotes make reference to the poetry of Gustaf Fröding and Verner von Heidenstam:

“I think he will become more himself when he is able to ‘boldly compose fancy free’ and lavishly give his fantastic and flamboyant designs free rein. Here he will also meet his client (Östberg), who similarly has one foot still in the exotic aestheticism of the 1890s, in the ‘pilgrimage and wander years’ of the young Heidenstam. He may seek to no avail, but with a bold approach he may also find ‘the king’s golden ring’, as in his original furniture compositions for the Golden Hall – utterly contemptible as furniture in the ordinary sense, but fitting in this romantic and expressionistic setting. There is a Byzantine, barbaric sheen to these imposing pieces...”