Swedish Grace tour

Swedish Grace is a movement of architecture and product design representing the Swedish interpretation of neoclassicism and Art Deco, in particular in Stockholm. This tour features many buildings from the movement, as well as other artistic features from the early 20th century.

Understand
Stockholm has a rich architectural history from the Middle Ages to the 21st century. The Stockholm Quay Palace Tour describes the city's architecture up to the late 19th century.

Up to the early 20th century, Sweden was influenced by German culture, to the degree that the art nouveau style is called jugend (German for "youth") in Swedish. Jugend and national romanticism (with references to the Viking Age and Nordic folk architecture) were the dominant styles up to the 1910s.

Sweden's domestic term for Art Deco was nordisk klassicism, "Nordic Classicism". The term Swedish Grace was in particular used for product design, coined as the title of a table service by the Rörstrand porcelain factory.

With the Great Depression, the 1930 Stockholm exhibition and the 1931 manifesto acceptera (note the lower-case title), Swedish architecture and product design took a sharp turn to functionalism (affectionately called funkis) which, like Swedish Grace, featured bright colours and rectangular structures. Functionalism replaced the historicist ornaments with austere expressions, intended for automated mass production and affordability, and has been the dominant style of Scandinavian architecture.

Get around




Eat and drink
See Nordic cuisine.

Go next

 * Functionalist architecture in Finland
 * Functionalist architecture in Finland
 * Functionalist architecture in Finland