Folkforms new installation features 1000 tiles

The Stockholm-based design studio Folkform has completed a permanent installation for a public indoor swimming pool in Spånga, northwest of Stockholm. Filling ten metres of wallspace at one end of the pool, the mural features a beautiful composition of ceramic tiles and old vintage glass. It was made using over 1000 individual glass and ceramic pieces installed by hand.

           The installation was commissioned by Stockholm Konst, a municipal fund for public art works. Folkform were selected for the project in open competition.

"All the different materials have a gentle shiny finish, allowing reflected and refracted light to dance across the surface," explains Folkform. The mural plays on the visual language of a bathhouse by collaging different utilitarian materials, such as glass brick, ceramic tiles and clinker brick. They have been combined with unique pieces of handmade glass dating from the 1950s, recovered from the glassworks at Orrefors in southern Sweden.

 “Instead of manufacturing new materials for this project we have reused old ornamented vintage glass that was going to be discarded, and the tiles and bricks we used are industrial readymades,” say Chandra Ahlsell and Anna Holmquist of Folkform. “It feels good to bring the vintage glass back to life. Used in a public setting like this it might inspire people to creatively reuse n their own lives.”

The design duo Folkform was founded in 2005 by Chandra Ahlsell and Anna Holmquist. They are represented in the collections of Nationalmuseum in Stockholm and Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo. In 2019 they received the prestigious Bruno Mathsson-award and did their biggest solo exhibition to date, called production Novellas, at Vandalorum in Sweden. Their most recent exhibition is a collaboration with fashion designer and artist Roland Hjort, combining art work and lighting design, shown at the restaurant Brillo, in Stockholm, until the end of the year.