Cooper Hewitt says...
Fristedt attended school at Beckmans College of Textile Education in the 1960’s. At the same time he began working at the textile company Boras Wafveri, where at the young age of 18 he was recognized for his print patterns titled Plexus, which was produced as the company’s first silk-screen print. Fristedt recalls, “There was a good deal of muttering from the others in the workshop. But I didn’t care about that as I realized that I would be going back to school soon.” (Wrede, Eva. 50’s and 60’s fabrics by Sven Fristedt. “Scandinavian Retro”). Plexus was a great success and Boras Wafveri continued to produce it until the late 1980’s. Soon after the success of Fristedt first fabric, he decided to leave school to begin designing patterns for a textile company MAB-MYA in Malmo. While working in Malmo he met the Swedish fashion designer Katja Geijer and he was brought on to design fabrics for her collections.
From the mid-1960’s onward Fristedt designed mainly for Boras Wafveri and Ikea. His designs during this period became Ikea classics and championed a distinctively Swedish aesthetic in textiles embodying simplicity and directness. Fristedt credits Marimekko, Josef Frank, and Ken Scott as a few of his sources for inspiration. Fristedt was part of an emerging generation of textile designers whose abstract, bold and geometric patterns differed from popular patterns of the 1950’s.
