This article is part of our Design special section about innovative surfaces in architecture, interiors and products.
“Looking at a map is like looking into a fire in a fireplace; there’s a sense of something happening all the time, and it draws you in,” said Anders Mattsson, a cabinetmaker for Svenskt Tenn.
The Swedish design company is celebrating its centennial by participating in a surge of interest in maps. It is wrapping cabinets in copies of a Stockholm map printed in the 1870s that is teeming with pedestrians and horse-drawn carriages promenading past churchyards, windmills, farmlands and moored sailing ships. Who were those people, where were they headed and how often were those streetscapes reworked? The detailed scenery, Mr. Mattsson said, “allows your fantasy just to wander.”
The limited-edition cabinet is based on mid-20th-century works by Svenskt Tenn’s founder, Estrid Ericson, and her longtime collaborator, the Austrian-born architect Josef Frank. The two designers used antique and modern maps of Stockholm, Manhattan, Paris, London and other locales to enliven furniture, textiles, dinnerware and wallcoverings. Cartographic patterns helped the team “cross borders and try new things,” said Per Ahlden, Svenskt Tenn’s curator.
The company is following a trail blazed over centuries by cartographers and artisans worldwide, who have created what are known as cartifacts. The term refers to objects with map motifs, such as ashtrays, lampshades, board games, book bindings, quilts and rugs.
Maps also have been incorporated historically into ancient mosaic floors in the Middle East, calf skins at medieval cathedrals, folding screens in Japan, tapestries for British and Italian aristocrats, samplers stitched by early American schoolgirls, frescoes at the Vatican, murals at American civic buildings, bamboo cheeseboards and linoleum flooring.
