Beschreibung:

AXEL EINAR HJORTH, "Paris", unique cabinet, executed for the Paris World exhibition in 1937, Nordiska Kompaniet, exterior veneered with rosewood, the pair of doors stylized with plant ornaments and strips of silver, interior veneered with mahogany and pockenholz, glas shelf and eight drawers with silver mounts, marked on plaque NK R 40281 C together with a very unusual brass plaque MADE IN SWEDEN, comes with original key, height 136, 84 x 42 cm EXHIBITED This cabinet exhibited in Paris 1937 - Exposition Internationale des arts et techniques dans la vie moderne. LITERATURE This cabinet is illustrated in Björk, Christian, Ekström, Thomas & Ericson, Eric, Axel Einar Hjorth: möbelarkitekt, 2009, page 69 and in the Swedish exibition catalogue - Utställning 1937. Paris, Paris international exhibition 1937: Arts and crafts in modern life. Sweden. Illustrated official guide. Ed. by Åke Stavenow. Stockholm, 1937, page 56. HISTORY For the past decade, Axel Einar Hjorth has been recognised as one of the most influential furniture architects of the twentieth century. One of his rare exhibition items is now to be sold at our Modern Auction this spring. Primitive-modernist pine furniture, exclusive radical functionalism, classical elegance and soberbourgeois modernism - Hjorth was a trail-blazer across the full spectrum of interior design trendsin the interwar period. As head architect for Nordiska Kompaniet (NK), he was the most important furniture architect in Sweden during the first half of the 1900s. While many of his contemporary colleagues chose to follow a rather restrained tradition, Hjorth took things to the next level, creating a unique, no-compromise design idiom that appealed to the financial and cultural elite of the age. Hjorth's idiom has survived and is truly international, which accounts for its great popularity among collectors and interior designers in cities around the globe.NK manufactured furniture in extensive batches, but also produced some unique exhibition items. At our Modern Auction this spring, we at Stockholms Auktionsverk will be selling a unique cabinet, one of the most lavish works of Hjorth's entire career. The cabinet was designed for and presented at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1937 (Exposition Internationale des arts et techniques dans la vie moderne). It is labelled with the drawing number R 40231, which is dated to 19 January 1937 and refers to the cabinet that was exhibited in Paris that same year. The NK archives and sales statistics reveal no information about any other cabinets made to the same drawing. NK and Hjorth had extensive experience in displaying their most exclusive furniture at national and international exhibitions. The World Exhibition in Paris in 1925, the Barcelona Exhibition in 1929, the Stockholm Exhibition in 1930 - all events that put Swedish design on the global map. The period was also distinguished by changes in the ideals of style. Luxurious classicism was replaced by strict functionalism. Axel Einar Hjorth was a pioneer in the aesthetic development and had a unique sense for craftsmanship, details and proportions - qualities that resulted in his sometimes peculiar design idiom remaining attractive and easily assimilated into modern interior design solutions today. Eight years previously, Hjorth had designed a magnificent cabinet for the Barcelona Exhibition in 1929, a cabinet that is the most expensive item of twentieth century furniture sold at auction in Sweden to date. The cabinet designed for the Paris Exhibition in 1937 is one of few items from Hjorth's oeuvre that approaches the same quality. In this work, Hjorth blended exotic woods with silver inlay in a finely stylised geometry that represented an intricate interplay between craftsmanship and modern ornamentation. The exterior of the cabinet is made of jacaranda decorated with stylised plants and geometric figures, which are inlaid in an evocative relief thatprotrudes a few millimetres above the surface of th