Josef Frank

Already during Josef Frank's years at the firm Haus & Garten in Vienna in the early 1930s, he began covering cabinets with various materials, at that time with textiles such as chintz and cretonne.

In parallel with Josef Frank's work in Vienna, Estrid Ericson made a trip in the summer of 1930 to Uppsala and Carl von Linné's Hammarby together with her friend, the author and poet Bo Bergman. Estrid was captivated by Linné's idea of covering the bedroom walls with botanical prints. She was inspired to do something similar in her own bedroom in her Stockholm apartment.

The upholstered furniture has become something of a hallmark of Svenskt Tenn's most exclusive production. From the 1930s onwards, the furniture varied in different ways, where the choice of upholstery and model of the furniture provided different expressions. There were various types of prints with highly varying motifs and types of graphic prints, sometimes maps, different kinds of fabrics, and occasionally leather.

A few years after Josef Frank and Estrid Ericson began their collaboration in the 1930s, they created a cabinet and a chest of drawers upholstered with prints from Palmstruch's flora, later from Lindman's flora. The chests of drawers, with model no 1050, were produced from around 1940.

The "Flora" chest of drawers has become a sought-after classic, so synonymous with Svenskt Tenn that in honour of the 300th anniversary of Carl von Linné's birth in 2007, the firm produced a commemorative chest of drawers upholstered with the same type of botanical prints that Linné himself had in his bedroom, these by Georg Dionysius Ehret in the 18th century. "The Linné Flora chest of drawers" was produced in a limited edition of 50 examples.

The present auction presents a rarely occurring opportunity to acquire a pair of Flora chests of drawers with similar patina.