Just published on the Näfveqvarns Bruk

Copies of a groundbreaking new history of the artistic production of the Näfveqvarns Foundry, published by Orosdi-Back, are now available at BAC. (Näfveqvarns Bruk Konstnärer och Arkitekter Till Industrin, limited copies at BAC for $40.00) Copies are also available on Amazon.com) The beautifully conceived hard-cover volume is the first to treat this work in an in-depth fashion, and includes many photographs that will be unfamiliar, even to collectors. The author is Christian Björk, one of the scholars behind the 2009 monograph on Axel Einar Hjörth (Signums).
By the early 20th century, cast iron was generally considered an old-fashioned medium best relegated to mundane applications like lamp posts. In the 1910s, the Näfveqvarns Foundry of Sweden , which had been casting iron for hundreds of years, was now headed by a dynamic new director that invigorated its production with new techniques and models that, against the odds, managed to make cast iron chic again.

In 1912, Näfveqvarns collaborated with the Swedish Society of Craft and Industrial Design (a body founded in the nineteenth century to improve design standards in Swedish industry) on a competition that opened the design of new models to outside talent. Soon a number of the era’s rising talents, such as architects Folke Bensow, Gunnar Asplund, Uno Åhrén and Carl Hörvik, and sculptors, such as Ivar Johnson, Anna Petrus, and Erik Grate, were designing furniture, decorative plaques, urns and other pieces for the Foundry.

The partnership with these artists resulted in some of the most iconic and original examples of the “Modern Classicism” aesthetic that dominated Swedish design in the 1920s. A sleek and lyrical take on the classical tradition, the style took its cues from the various forms of classical revival that had been popular in Sweden since the late 18th century, rationalizing and rearranging them for 20th century life.

Through publications and exhibitions, Näfveqvarns garnered international acclaim, with models displayed at Hemutställningen in 1917, the Jubilee Exhibition in Gothenburg in 1923, the Paris Exposition of 1925, as well as a follow-up exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the same year.

Although the Foundry eventually ceased its artistic production, the pieces it created during the first half of the 20th century are today prized by collectors for their unique voice in the history of design.