Josef Frank's Aristidia

Josef Frank’s Aristidia print is in focus at Svenskt Tenn for Christmas 2022. With Atlantis as our theme, we are highlighting designs that are influenced by the sea in various ways. Designer Luke Edward Hall has created the fabric pattern Coral Diamond Trellis inspired by Aristidia, and the original pattern has also been relaunched in the classic green colour scheme first printed in the 1920s.

Aristidia is one of Josef Frank’s earliest prints. He designed it in the 1920s for Haus und Garten, his company in Vienna. It was originally called Tang, the German word for seaweed, but was renamed to Aristidia when the print was later produced in Sweden for Svenskt Tenn. Many believe that the inspiration for the print came from the seaside town of Falsterbo on the south coast of Swedish, where Josef Frank often spent summers with his wife, Anna Frank.

The name Aristidia conjures up Greece and the writer Aristides, who lived around 100 BC. It evokes connotations of the Mediterranean and Aegean Sea rather than the North Sea or Baltic Sea off the coast of Falsterbo. One reason for the name change is said to be a concern that Tång, the Swedish word for seaweed, could be misinterpreted to mean pliers, a tool with the same Swedish name.

Alternating light and dark stars stabilise the composition, acting as fixed stars and counteracting an otherwise unsettling impression.

– Author Kristina Wängberg-Eriksson on the print and its composition

HOW IT IS PRINTED

As with all Josef Frank designs, Aristidia is screen printed, which is a time-consuming but high-quality way to print on textiles. It is a form of stencil printing that dates back thousands of years, when it was used in Egypt, China and Greece. In those days, stencils were cut out of leather, oiled paper or metal. To keep them in place while printing, the stencils were attached with silk threads or strands of hair, which can sometimes be spotted on old prints as thin lines between the stencils. Today’s production is more modern than that, but it is still entirely dependent on the craftspeople behind the printing process.