The Modern Interior

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Josef Frank, a large living room designed for the Weissenhof Siedlung, 1927, illustrated
in Hans Eckstein’s Die Schone Wohnung, 1931.
An interior Frank created in Vienna for the Weissenhof Siedlung of
1927, which featured cushions and patterned curtains at the windows,
was heavily criticized by Theo van Doesburg, who described it as ‘feminine’.
24 Through the 1930s, from his base at Stockholm’s elegant furniture
store, Svensk Tenn, and in conjunction with the shop’s owner Estrid
Ericson, Frank developed an interior idiom combining references from
the past (the eighteenth century in particular) with white walls and
modernized versions of traditional patterns. Ironically, given his Austrian
roots, by the late 1930s his interior aesthetic had been dubbed ‘Swedish
Modern’ and had become inextricably associated with that country’s bid
to lead the way in the formulation of a mid-century, modern decorative
interior style.
By the mid-1920s the pre-eminence of the Viennese designers in
the formulation of a modern decorative language for the interior was
being taken away from them, however, by the French ‘ensembliers’. A 1915