A rarity from Svenskt Tenn’s early production

With new world records for Josef Frank's unique cabinets season after season, Bukowskis is proud to present another rarity by Josef Frank for spring 2023, the so-called "Rose Cabinet".

A home is constantly evolving, according to Josef Frank. ⁠The successful collaboration with Svenskt Tenn founder Estrid Ericson began in the 1930s. It resulted in furniture and home furnishings that have become icons and classics – objects that never seem to go out of date.**

Josef Frank began covering cabinets with various materials, at that time mainly with different types of textiles, during his years in Vienna in the 1920s at the firm Haus & Garten. In Sweden, Frank designed the first cabinet in 1937 to be covered with floral prints from Palmstruch's flora, later Lindman's flora. Together with Estrid Ericson, Josef Frank made many different variants with covered surfaces on his cabinets; textile, leather, snakeskin, and sometimes with maps.

This cabinet, ordered by Elsa von Rosen, is probably a special order. The cabinet is similar to model number 522, which was designed in 1934-1935. That model is considerably smaller in size, with a height of 120 cm and a width of 80. Compare this with the cabinet, which is 140 cm high and 120.5 cm wide.

The cabinet is upholstered in a chintz fabric that evokes the more glamorous and generous interiors of the 1930s-1940s than those usually associated with Swedish interiors at that time. The richly floral surface is more reminiscent of the period's American interiors. It is not surprising that it was Countess Elsa von Rosen, a woman with the potential for an international outlook, who commissioned the cabinet in this design. The colourfulness is, of course, also characteristic of the Svenskt Tenn company and the interiors we have come to associate with the firm's signature designs since the mid-1930s and even today.