Stockholm Design Week | From Modern to Mod

Photographs courtesy of Gubi The Danish furniture company Gubi has resurrected classic midcentury Modernist designs like (from left to right) Greta Magnusson’s Grasshopper lamp, Jens Qvistgaard’s Stokke chair, and Mathieu Mategot’s Dedal bookcase.

In most people’s minds, there are only two settings on the Nordic furniture dial: Then (meaning postwar Modern) and Now. While I went to this year’s Stockholm Design Week, which ends on Sunday, excited solely about the latter, it turned out that the fair had something to offer in the former department as well. The Danish manufacturer Gubi recently shifted its attention towards resurrecting mid-century design icons, and the first fruits of that effort are on display this week. It has reissued Greta Grossman’s 1947 Grasshopper lamp and the 1966 Stokke Chair by Jens Qvistgaard, and is now the sole owner of reproduction rights for the cult Hungarian designer Mathieu Mategot’s work, starting with a multicolored coat rack and two pieces in his signature perforated metal: the Nagasaki chair and the Dedal bookcase. Mategot fans accustomed to 1stdibs sticker shock should rejoice.

DESCRIPTIONCourtesy of Offect The Swedish manufacturer Offect introduced products by contemporary designers, like Luca Nichetto’s Green Pads table.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Swedish manufacturer Offect has commissioned some of contemporary design’s biggest names to create flora-friendly furniture for its new Oasis collection. Meant to encourage people to keep more plants around the house — thus improving their indoor air quality — the pieces include low saucer tables by Claesson Koivisto Rune, spindly-legged troughs by Front, soft seating islands with built-in vases by Jean-Marie Massaud, and pocked pedestals inspired by clusters of flowerpot saucers, by the Italian up-and-comer Luca Nichetto.

DESCRIPTIONMonica Khemsurov The exhibition “20 Designers at Biologiska,” which was curated by Frederick Färg and Emma Marga Blanche, featured pieces–like the Bagar storage system by the design company Brikolör and the House of Possibilities clock by the Karin Auran Frankenstein–that were installed among the dioramas in the natural history museum in Stockholm.

Arguably the biggest attraction of the week, however, is an offsite show whose curators had the opposite intention: to take design objects out of the home and into nature, or at least something like it. For “20 Designers at Biologiska”, Frederick Färg and Emma Marga Blanche have invited nearly two dozen other young talents to display their work in and around the dioramas in the city’s 118-year-old natural history museum. The pair worked with museum directors to gingerly install clay clocks, massive glass eyeballs, and aqueduct-like bookshelves among the taxidermied walruses and sea birds, and the stunning results celebrate both the old and the new. The only downside is how soon the exhibition itself will be history — it closes Saturday.