Svenskt Tenn’s founder Estrid Ericson travelled a lot to different places around the world. She always looked for beautiful items and textiles that she could take home and sell in the store on Strandvägen in Stockholm. The Stensöta textile is from the English textile company GP & J Baker, whose designs were often based on traditional historical prints. Estrid Ericson began buying textiles from them as early as the 1930s.

The classic Stensöta (original name “Ferns”) print is the only GP & J Baker fabric in Svenskt Tenn’s range, not designed by William Turner. It was created by Joseph M Doran, who set up a studio in Hounslow in the early 1900s. GP & J Baker patronised his work from 1912 to 1936, bringing out twenty Doran designs as hand-blocked furnishings. Ferns was purchased in January 1935 for twelve Guineas. The design is based upon botanical drawings published in Curtis’ Flora Londinensis between 1777 and 1798 (a record of plants growing within a ten-mile radius of London).

GP & J Baker is a family-run company founded in 1884 by brothers George Percival and James Baker. Together with their father they travelled around the Far East and Asia purchasing designs, textiles, sketches and thousands of pattern books that are today in the Baker’s sizeable textile archives. Svenskt Tenn became one of Baker’s first customers in Sweden when Josef Frank, inspired by Baker’s designs, introduced the company to Estrid Ericson in the 1930s.