Axel Einar Hjorth
Axel Einar Hjorth was born in a small Swedish village named Krokek, just outside Norrköping, on March 7, 1888. Due to a difficult youth, he was placed with a well-off foster family. At the age of 20, he moved to Stockholm to study architecture and design at the Högre Konstindustriella Skolan. He was forced to drop out of his studies when his foster father died.
Although he never graduated, in the 1920s Hjorth started working as a furniture designer for various manufacturers, such as H. Joop & Co., Myrestedt & Stern, Jonssons, and Nordiska Kompaniet. Hjorth’s designs from this period had neoclassical features combined with Swedish Grace. This romantic national style of Sweden was elegant and refined, yet simple. The trend lived for a relatively short period and, soon after, the country was going to embrace the unstoppable progression of modernism and functionalism.
The anniversary exhibition of 1923 in Gothenburg - which marked the breakthrough of Swedish decorative arts - as well as the 1927 exhibition of the Contemporary Swedish Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum in New York (together with Carl Malmsten and Carl Hörvik) made Axel Einar Hjorth a well-respected artist, and to a large extent, part of the international success of Swedish design. For October 1927, Hjorth acted as the chief designer/architect of the Nordiska Kompaniet department store in Stockholm, which was one of the major manufacturers of modern furniture in Sweden. He left Nordiska Kompaniet in 1938 in order to start his own business.
Hjorth’s designs, from the luxury of neoclassicism to the severity of functionalism, are sharply distinctive in style, materials, and character. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Hjorth did not conform to the socially oriented ideas produced by Svensk Form (the Swedish Society of Crafts and Design). He often incorporated playful ornamentation from different historical periods by which he was inspired, such as the French Art Déco, using mixed exotic woods, bright colours, and textiles.
In the 1930s, Hjorth designed a furniture collection out of pine meant for serial production known as Sportstugemöbler (furniture for holiday houses). The collection is based on Swedish rural traditions mixed with international modernism, and has its pieces named after Stockholm's islands including Blidö, Sandhamn, Toro and Lovö. The pieces are renowned for their modern look, displaying strong proportions, simplicity in construction, and a brilliant union between tradition and modernism.
Hjorth played a significant role in the development of Swedish society as a whole, and particularly in Swedish industrial art. Whilst several of Hjorth’s contemporary colleagues have received great attention in the history of Swedish architecture and design, he was often overlooked by the lack of published and archived works. He remained a rather unknown entity in the design world and his achievements were under-appreciated. Today Hjorth is often viewed as a precursor to the modern designs popularized by Charlotte Perriand, Jean Royére, Pierre Chapo, or Josef Frank. Recently, there has been a revival of appreciation for his work, showing his genius in a new light. ~H.
