Otto Wretling: Part 2

The furniture of the Wretling firm has long remained partly hidden from a wider audience. Originally a painting business, the firm expanded into cabinetmaking a few years into the 20th century. Furniture in historical styles was designed and made to order for local clients, while the firm also made a name for itself at regional exhibitions, where it showed furniture in a rustic Art Nouveau style. The execution was idiosyncratic but, if parallels are to be drawn, showed an affinity with what was happening in the Arvika area. The most progressive pieces imitated the bark of pine trees, with touches of restrained decoration. In the 1920s the furniture took on classicising features, followed by new models bearing hints of the period's modern lines – though often painted in a colour palette unlike that of any other Swedish furniture maker.

At Norrlands Auktionsverk we are now offered a truly fantastic taste of what was going on up in Umeå just over a hundred years ago. Here we see those rustic nature-inspired pieces. Alongside the internationally sought-after sofa suite furniture is a fairly simple yet confidently designed armchair that somehow anticipates the cabin aesthetic. A dining table decorated with bunches of grapes is typical of what the workshops produced in the second half of the 1910s. It is followed by a sideboard with traces of Swedish Modern, before we arrive at an armchair and a sofa that can surely only be catalogued as "Umeå Deco"?

This is a truly unique opportunity to acquire high-quality craftsmanship that adds to our picture of emerging Swedish modernism.

Welcome!