The only way to really understand how much the Stockholm design emporium Svenskt Tenn stands for Swedish style is to go and visit the store. What Hermès and Fortnum & Mason are to Paris and London, respectively — beacons that help foreigners better grasp the culture of the town they’re in — Svenskt Tenn is to their northern and more mysterious sister. At the 90-year-old department store, you can buy almost anything for the home, from one of the deepest production sofas in the world to a doorstop shaped like an acorn — anything, that is, but something boring. It’s fitting that the ground floor of the store includes an art gallery with a rotating schedule of shows.  “Sober and Elegant,” the current exhibition on view through June 1, explores a specific moment in the brand’s own history. Founded in 1924 by Estrid Ericson, Svenskt Tenn (the name means “Swedish Pewter”) is now best known for its collection of vivid and psychedelic textiles designed by the Austrian architect Josef Frank, who, fleeing Nazism, came to Sweden and began a partnership with Ericson in 1934. What “Sober and Elegant” unveils is the interesting and obscure early period pre-Frank, when Ericson’s world was still a minimalist’s dream: emphatically tailored and with a palette almost as white as Syrie Maugham’s. The full room installation feels like a real lived-in space and is full of current inventory from the brand but is presented in the pared-back, Ericsonian way of doing things. It suggests that if she had stopped there, and never teamed up with Frank, Ericson would still have been a great designer by modern standards — but it also reminds us of the value of always keeping our minds open to something new.
“Sober and Elegant” explores the minimalist beginnings of Svenskt Tenn, now renowned for its colorful textiles thanks to a creative partnership formed ten years after it opened in 1924.