A Fleeting Glimpse? ‘Sweden’s Shop Window in Sydney’ - the Sweden at David Jones’ Exposition of 1954

ABSTRACT

On Wednesday 16 June 1954, a vast exposition of Swedish applied arts, manufacture, lifestyle, and industry opened at Sydney‘s largest department store, David Jones‘ Limited. Presenting Swedish design, food, fashion, merchandise, industry, cars, aeroplanes, machinery, and culture to Australian consumers Sweden at David Jones‘ transformed David Jones‘ three Sydney stores into temporary sites of cultural exchange. It ran concurrent with the North American travelling exhibition Design in Scandinavia and just weeks ahead of the Scandinavian dominated 10th Milan Triennial. What began life as a trade fair to sell more Swedish goods in Australia, transformed into a major exposition that rivalled international events. Inspired by Marshall Plan ‘Buy European’ retail fairs, Sweden at David Jones‘ was intended as a one-off event. Instead, it became a blueprint for David Jones‘ annual calendar of international expos that developed a new type of interlinked commercial and cultural diplomacy. This paper positions Sweden at David Jones’ as a missing chapter in Australian design history during an era of increased interest in Swedish design and the extensive cultural diplomacy efforts of Sweden in the twentieth century. It reflects on chance and serendipity in archival research while considering the exposition‘s physical temporality and its enduring legacy.

Fragments and Traces: Prelude

It is December 2017 and here I am, again, in an archive in Sweden. It is an archive I have visited many times before, meticulously catalogued, and organised, but rather remote in the outer suburbs of Stockholm. My appointment at the archive today is to revisit volumes for a paper I am writing. For a change, I have allowed myself additional time to examine several photographic holdings that have tantalised me for years but haven’t found the time for on my previous visits. Today, things take an unexpected turn.

In the inventory listing is a box described as containing photos of various Swedish international exhibitions from 1954–55. I request the volume and minutes later it arrives at the desk I am working at in the open study room. As I work through the contents of the box, I find a folder that stops me in my tracks. It is labelled “Varuhuset David Jones Sydney 1954.” Inside the folder are black and white photographs of model room settings, with Swedish furniture, fabrics, and light fittings except one of an information panel describing the democratic welfare state. My first thought is perhaps they are mislabelled; surely a European or American exhibition? However, when I turn the photos over, alongside the usual details of the photographer and date, written in Swedish is “A Swedish exhibition in Sydney’s largest department store David Jones, 1954.” How could I have not known about this exhibition before? I study the images and make copies on my phone, checking back through other volumes to make sure I haven’t missed anything. I make notes in my journal and create a long to do list. I leave the archive hours later with copies of the six photographs and an intense curiosity.

Back in Australia, I reflect on my chance find and set out to learn more. I find another fragment. A catalogue of an exposition in 1954 named Sweden at David Jones’ in the collection of the National Library of Australia. Confirmation. I trawl newspaper archives where I find further traces and slowly, I piece together and reconstruct a forgotten history. I find traces across several other archives, including an album of press clippings, photographs, and ephemera in a box in the basement of the Swedish Embassy in Canberra. Precious traces packed away for someone, me, to discover at another time. I travel back to Sweden and visit more archives. There I find more fragments, more traces. Finally, over several days either side of the pandemic I am rewarded with extensive material that added colour and detail to the remarkable story that follows.¹

“If You Can’t Get to Sweden in Europe, Come to Sweden at David Jones’” ²

In June 1954, a few months after hosting the State Dinner for the visiting British Royal Family in its Grand Restaurant, David Jones’ department store in Sydney (DJs’) brought Sweden to Australia. Swedish flags flew from the flagpoles of its three city stores and its window displays were transformed to displays of all things Swedish. Advertising in the daily newspapers invited Sydneysiders to “Take a tram and get off at Sweden” and indeed thousands did.³ DJs’ stores held special events, demonstrations and displays while an extensive range of Swedish merchandise was available for purchase at every price point. DJs’ customers dined on Swedish smorgasbord, drank Swedish beer, watched Swedish films, read Swedish books, marvelled at the modern and sophisticated interiors of an eight room Swedish model home, perused a museum display of Swedish applied arts, and took a little bit of Sweden home. Sydney newspapers ran special features on all aspects of Swedish life, industry, and culture. Sweden at David Jones’ was reported as “one of the largest expositions of Swedish design, merchandise, industry and way of life ever to be staged in a foreign country.”⁴ It embraced the handmade as strongly as the industrial, blurring the boundaries between public and private everyday experiences of modernity.⁵ Its innovative character, combining applied arts and culture alongside industrial equipment and machines, was the first of its kind in Australia.⁶

But how and why did this take place in Sydney, Australia in 1954? Before answering that question, it is important to unpack just how the reconstruction of this little-known transnational history has come to light. Penny Sparke has proposed that the modern interior “can be represented through architectural plans, drawings, photographs, ensembles of objects or constructed spaces.”⁷ In this paper, I attempt to reconstruct the brief and transient ensembles of objects and temporary spaces that formed the exposition Sweden at David Jones’ through the traces it has left behind.

Traces of Sweden at David Jones’ have emerged in Australian scholarship, either referred to as “Sweden in Australia”⁸ or mentioned in relation to the Italian-Australian architect Enrico Taglietti and DJs’ 1955 Italian exposition, aptly named Italy at David Jones’.⁹ It has been positioned as “a key event which awakened Australian consumers to Swedish design and culture” however this claim has remained unexamined.¹⁰ While this scholarship references period newspaper reports and a textual catalogue of the exposition, they have to date remained the only evidence that the exposition took place. The point of departure for this paper is expanded research in both Australia and Sweden, conducted over five years either side of the pandemic. It has brought the exposition back to life to establish its significance. It draws on a rich trove of previously unstudied visual materials, correspondence, drawings, and documentation that have been crucial in reconstructing the exposition, its design, development, reception, and the network of intermediaries that were crucial actors in its realisation.¹¹

Aside from providing new knowledge of this significant exposition, this paper introduces the Swedish exhibition architect, Gunnar Myrstrand (1925–1997), an important yet forgotten figure in twentieth century design history. Period newspaper articles erroneously credit the Swedish advertising designer Anders Beckman (1907–67) with the design of Sweden at David Jones’. As a result, Myrstrand’s central role in the design of Sweden at David Jones’ remains uncredited and unknown. This paper addresses this error by expanding on archival evidence and giving long overdue credit to Myrstrand. The paper also locates the exposition within a trio of important Swedish and Scandinavian exhibitions of 1954. It adds to scholarship on the Australian department store, and brings a new dimension to the history of David Jones’ - one of the oldest department stores in the world.¹² The exposition is discussed through the lens of cultural and design diplomacy and positioned as cultural transfer through trade, and the influence and assimilation of “Swedish Modern” in Australia - a “globalising moment” or “circulation” with reference to Da Costa Kauffman, Dossin and Joyeux-Prunel.¹³

Cultural diplomacy is often associated with the Cold War period (1947–91) when both superpowers deployed political “soft” power as a geopolitical tool.¹⁴ Cultural diplomacy and transnational exchange through design increased after WWII through the “soft power” of design exhibitions, industrial and trade fairs, expositions, and festivals. “Design diplomacy” is the term used to capture the combination of propaganda and goodwill that these design expositions performed, and to expand the remit of cultural diplomacy beyond the USA and the Cold War.¹⁵ Well known examples include the 1950s Milan Triennials, referred to by Swedish scholar Kerstin Wickman as the “Design Olympics”, and the travelling exhibitions Design in Scandinavia in North America of 1954–57 and its later Australian edition of 1968–69.¹⁶ This paper locates Australia in scholarship on the role of the Post-War department store as a venue for international expositions.¹⁷ I argue that not only is Sweden at David Jones’ an overlooked episode in Swedish and Australian design history, it firmly locates Australia within Swedish transnational exchange and the circulation of modernist ideas in the Post War period. Australia is often peripheral in discussion of these circulations and exchanges.

Sweden in Australia

The decades following World War II in Australia were characterised by significant social and ideological changes. The nation underwent a period of rapid economic growth, reconstruction, and modernisation. A programme of increased immigration from European countries brought people from a range of diverse cultural backgrounds to Australia, foregrounding the nation’s shift to a modern, multicultural, consumer society. New forms of expression in Australian literature, art, architecture, and design looked to international developments as the nation embraced the future and modern ways of living. Australian department stores entered a period of transformation and growth in the 1950s and played a critical role in shaping the social and cultural landscape. Stores such as Myer Emporium in Melbourne, Anthony Hordern’s and David Jones’ in Sydney offered consumers a wide range of products and services and became important sites of social and cultural exchange.

Between 1940–53, Australians gained an increased awareness of Swedish design through journals, homemaker magazines and newspapers, often by way of Britain or North America. By the time of Sweden at David Jones’, Swedish Modern had become a familiar stylistic category in Australia. In 1938, The Home magazine characterised Swedish Modern as “distinguished by simplicity” while Melbourne’s The Sun newspaper proclaimed its democratic practicality and adaptability to the Australian way of life.¹⁸ Swedish and Scandinavian interiors, furniture and domestic objects were regularly featured as exemplars in the pages of The Australian Home Beautiful magazine where Swedish designers own homes were praised for their “clean cut lines, simple shapes and honest use of materials”.¹⁹ Its editorials were critical of the state of Australian design that was confirmed by “experts” who found that “our furnishings lack taste”.²⁰ Taste became a recurring point of discussion throughout the 1950s and well into the 1960s as Australia embraced modern ideas and styles.

Swedish architecture and town planning was of great interest in Australia from the 1930s, increasing its local influence following WWII.²¹ In 1947, The Journal of the Australian Master Builders Association proclaimed that “Sweden is Modern” through “a general atmosphere of lightness in Swedish architecture” with its “large window spaces, light coloured walls, light textiles and light furniture”.²² The same year, Sydney architect Percy Gordon (1892–1992) travelled to Sweden to study exemplary modern housing for the NSW Housing Commission. He adapted the innovative star-house plan he had seen in Stockholm for the design of social housing in the Devonshire Rehousing Scheme in Surry Hills that upon its completion in 1953, brought a taste of the utopian Swedish social democratic suburb to Sydney.²³ Swedish prefabricated homes were imported to Australia in the early 1950s to address the post-war housing shortage for returning service personnel.²⁴ Some of these homes came complete with the Swedish tradesmen to erect them, many of whom stayed and made Australia their home. The Melbourne architect and critic Robin Boyd (1919–71), writing for the Small Homes Section of Melbourne’s The Age newspaper, proposed that the lightness, precision detail and use of wood in Swedish and Scandinavian houses was an appropriate model for the future style for Australian homes.²⁵ In Canberra, The Swedish Royal Legation, developed by Peddle Thorpe and Walker from sketch plans by Swedish architect E. H. G. Lundquist and noted for successfully adapting the “clean graceful lines characteristic of Swedish architecture” to Australian conditions, was awarded the 1952 Sulman Medal by the Royal Australian Institute of Architects.²⁶

Limited quantities of modern Swedish and Finnish bent-wood furniture, by Bruno Mathsson and Alvar Aalto respectively, became available in Australia around 1950 introducing local designers to an alternative form of expression in modern furniture. High import tariffs intended to protect Australian industry meant that imported furniture was scarce and expensive. Australian Post-war immigration policies favoured European and Scandinavian migrants who came to Australia and circulated Swedish design ideas and principles.²⁷ Like developments in North America, local furniture makers and designers popularised an Australian version of “Swedish Modern” leading to the development of popular Swedish and Scandinavian influenced furniture ranges.²⁸ While often advertised as being “Swedish” they were not. Rather, they were “Swedish style” designed in Australia using local timbers such as those from The Fler Company and Parker Furniture.²⁹ Sydney based Swedish-Craft Packaged Furniture, produced flat-pack copies of Douglas Snelling’s (1916–85) “Snelling Line” produced by Functional Products in Sydney, that in turn copied Danish American Jens Risom’s webbed timber furniture and Ralph Rapson’s range for Knoll Associates in New York.³⁰ Swedish Craft was headed by Karen Ingeborg Baar (1917–73), a German immigrant who went to extraordinary lengths to capitalise on the Swedish Modern vogue by reinventing herself as the “Swedish” designer “Karen Ingeborg”. Manufacturers such as The Fler Company travelled to Sweden for inspiration and employed Swedish woods, components, and names for its 1940s and 1950s Australian designed furniture ranges. Australian designer Grant Featherstone openly acknowledged that his early furniture was indebted to Swedish and Scandinavian influences.³¹

Swedish glass was widely popular in Australia by the 1950s, brought about through an earlier act of diplomacy. The Canberra Cup, an engraved and cut crystal design by Simon Gate and Edward Hald for Orrefors Sweden, was an official gift from the Swedish Government to Australia on the opening of Parliament House in Canberra in 1927. It became the catalyst for the enduring popularity of Swedish glass in Australia. Glass from Orrefors, Kosta, Åfors, Boda, Flygsfors and others became more widely available in Australia from the 1930s. By the 1950s, Australia was one of the biggest export markets for Swedish glass, after the USA.³²

It was not only design and architecture that attracted the attention of Australian commentators. The Swedish Welfare State, economic policy, industry and culture were subjects of increased interest, with newspaper editorials praising Sweden’s labour system, local manufacturing and “middle-way” between communism and consumerism.³³ These factors worked in unison to foster familiarity and a receptive audience in Australia for all things Swedish and Scandinavian.

A Globalising Moment. Sweden Exhibits at David Jones’

Rather than evolving from a strictly cultural impetus, Sweden at David Jones’ grew from a series of interconnected economic and cultural processes across national borders, brought about by chance. In April 1953, the Swedish Australian Chamber of Commerce met to discuss holding a Swedish trade exhibition at Sydney Town Hall later that year, to keep ahead of the activities of France, Germany, and Japan in increasing market share in Australia. By chance, a Chamber member had seen articles in American publications on Italy in Macy’s U.S.A., a 1951 Marshall Plan retail fair staged at Macy’s Department Store in New York. The Chamber member observed that the Italian exporters had received extensive publicity and built goodwill because of the exhibition. The suggestion was made to the Swedish Chamber of Commerce that something similar might be held in Sydney with a view to sell more Swedish goods and build goodwill between Sweden and Australia.

Italy in Macy’s U.S.A. was a highly successful showcase of Italian culture and products held at Macy’s Department Store in Herald Square, New York during January 1951. Sponsored by the United States and Italian Governments, it was supported by Marshall Plan aid to promote European economic recovery and strengthen relations between the USA and Italy following WWII.³⁴ David Lloyd Jones (1931–61), represented David Jones’ Limited as a member of the Swedish Chamber of Commerce. At the meeting where the Swedish trade exhibition was first discussed Jones was responsible for highlighting its unique potential and bringing the collision of coincidences to fruition. Jones closely followed developments in international department stores, including Italy in Macy’s, and supported by his father, Charles Lloyd Jones (1878–1958), DJs’ became one of the first to introduce international innovations and initiatives in the family’s Sydney stores.

In 1948, DJs hosted the first Christian Dior “New Look” fashion parade outside of Paris and offered a wide range of imported goods for purchase in its stores, including a large selection from Sweden. Being familiar with Italy in Macy’s, David Lloyd Jones offered 22,000 sq. ft. of floor space across all three of DJs’ Sydney stores free of charge. In return, DJs’ required that the exhibition be sponsored by Swedish officials at the highest possible level along with logistical and financial support.³⁵ A committee was formed, and a formal proposal was presented to the General Export Association of Sweden in July 1953. By this time, the exhibition had increased in scope, as more ambitious plans took hold.

Sweden was no stranger to international expositions having organised numerous highly acclaimed and widely publicised exhibitions, including a leading role in the planning and organisation of the upcoming North American Design in Scandinavia travelling exhibition of 1954. There is a long lineage of transient spaces at prestigious international venues orchestrated by Svenska slöjdföreningen (The Swedish Society of Arts and Crafts, SSF) that include the Swedish Pavilion at the 1930 Paris Exposition, the 1939 New York World’s Fair and the 1950s Milan Triennials.³⁶ With such a pedigree, it is perhaps not surprising that the idea of staging an exhibition within a department store on the opposite side of the world would be met with some apprehension. Sweden was after all an expert in exhibiting the democratic welfare state to which design was inextricably linked. Finances and high import tariffs were amongst the initial challenges however, this was resolved by the scheduled relaxation of Australian Trade Tariffs in April 1954. After some delay, Sweden set out its concerns to the Chamber and DJs’ stating its position on maintaining full control of the planning, design and installation of the exhibition so that it would not “drown” in the big department store” concluding that “it must not be David Jones who exhibits Swedish goods, but must be Sweden, who exhibits at David Jones.”³⁷ DJs’ was surprised at the delay given its generous offer and commitment to a high-quality exhibition. It would perhaps have benefited more by inviting France, Italy or Germany to exhibit as the department store purchased more goods from those countries. It took several months and much correspondence between Sydney and Stockholm before the proposal was finally accepted by Sweden.

The General Export Association of Sweden appointed Olof Ternström (1927–2001) as Secretary General of the Committee for the Sydney Exhibition. Ternström, an economist, former Trade Commissioner to Canada and Secretary of the General Export Association managed the detailed planning on the Swedish side. Working from plans and photographs of DJs’ stores he coordinated all aspects in consultation with the Swedish Chamber of Commerce and DJs’. He travelled to Sydney with the exhibition and manned the General Export Association’s Information Office for its duration. The SSF was assigned responsibility for the design and curation of a cultural exhibition and model home, appointing advertising designer Anders Beckman and exhibition architect Gunnar Myrstrand to undertake the task. Swedish manufacturers and makers were invited to nominate for inclusion in a trade fair at DJs’ and available spaces were quickly filled. It was a measured and democratic selection process that ensured a wide cross section of Swedish industry was represented. In Australia, the Swedish Chamber of Commerce and DJs’ handled the local organisation. DJs’ dispatched a team of buyers from its Sydney and London offices on an extensive purchasing mission to Sweden following an itinerary devised in consultation with the Swedish General Export Association and the SSF. It had become a serious mission of retail purchasing and cultural diplomacy. An announcement was published in Swedish newspapers in January 1954 illustrated with Beckman’s early poster design for “Sweden, an exhibition at David Jones”.³⁸ Soon, the exposition took the name Sweden at David Jones’ referencing its inspiration Italy in Macy’s U.S.A.

Despite its accidental beginnings, Sweden at David Jones’ became an important instrument of both cultural and design diplomacy for Sweden. Its aim was to increase knowledge of each other and “strengthen not only economic relations but also the ties of culture and tradition.”³⁹ Sweden viewed Australia’s growing population and “energetic and practical people” as sharing similarities with Swedes and thus represented an attractive market.⁴⁰

Department Stores are Kind of Like Museums

During the twentieth century, the department store was frequently utilised as a non-institutional setting for exhibitions that blurred the lines between cultural and commercial imperatives and as a site of cultural exchange. Emerging from World’s Fairs of the nineteenth century, the department store became more than a retail emporium, it presented a window to the world.

Andy Warhol is famous for the provocative quip, “When you think about it, department stores are kind of like museums.”⁴¹ While Warhol was fascinated with consumer culture and high versus low in art, in the context of this paper this kind of rings true. There are surprising parallels between the department stores Nordiska Kompaniet (NK) in Stockholm and David Jones’ in Sydney as important sites in the presentation and mediation of modern design. The relationship between Sweden’s Nationalmuseum, the SSF and NK department store is significant. The SSF fostered cooperation with NK in 1917 and later said that “as long as we do not have a modern museum of the decorative arts, the NK acts in its stead, a task we will continue to make demands of”.⁴² David Jones’ department store had an established relationship with The Art Gallery of New South Wales through its Chairman, Sir Charles Lloyd Jones. He was a trained artist, cofounder of the important journals Art in Australia and The Home in the 1920s and a trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales for 24 years. Sydney was without a modern museum of decorative arts until the 1980s, and in the absence of suitable institutional venues for the exhibition of design and culture, DJs’ assumed this role first through David Jones’ Art Gallery and later with Sweden at David Jones’ and the many international expositions that followed. Department store galleries and exhibition spaces were by no means a DJs’ innovation in Australia, rather it was DJs’ programming and curation that was unique.

With the involvement of the SSF in the design and curation of The Cultural Exhibition and Swedish Model Home, the General Export Association of Sweden indicated just how seriously they viewed the exposition and the potential of the Australian market. The SSF is renowned for Gregor Paulsson’s 1919 manifesto “More beautiful everyday things”, the 1930 Stockholm Exhibition and extensive cultural diplomacy through design in the twentieth century.⁴³ The Sydney exposition presented an opportunity for the cultural elite of the SSF to spread its “gospel of good taste” to a distant and new audience.⁴⁴ The SSF’s good taste initiatives included not only exhibitions but “how to” guides to “correct” taste in modern furnishings and everyday goods for the young homemaker.

The good taste efforts of the SSF were echoed in the pages of Australian homemaker magazines and dovetailed with DJs’ own aspirations as a tastemaker. From the 1940s, DJs’ Art Gallery introduced Australians to the latest local and international developments in both art and design. Charles Lloyd Jones said that “Australia must have new ideas to overcome its isolation” citing imagination, immigration and ideas as essential to post-war development.⁴⁵ It was this sentiment that underscored the programming of DJs’ Art Gallery and the presentation of expositions that began with Sweden at David Jones’. Jones later summed up these aspirations.

We keep the public up-to-the-minute in the realms of fashion: we have Art exhibitions, and thus add to the culture of the community: we have shows of various kinds which help to educate the people in better taste. People come to David Jones’ to see all these new ideas, for they find under our roof the treasures of the world.⁴⁶

In support of these ambitions, DJs’ Art Gallery introduced the New York Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMA) “Good Design” initiatives to Australia in 1951 with the exhibition What is good modern design? Described by gallery manager, M. P. Ferrandiere, as “an exhibition dedicated to good taste and good living” it was framed as “an attempt to encourage better taste in the community.”⁴⁷ It was the first exhibition of its kind in Australia, closely referencing the first Good Design exhibition staged at MoMA in 1951. Ferrandiere selected all the objects, following MoMA’s criteria of well-designed “useful objects.” The exhibition showcased an extensive range of modern Australian furniture from Artes Studios and Kalmar Interiors, alongside a primarily Australian range of textiles, silver, glass, crystal, porcelain, sculpture and pottery supplemented with international exemplars. The objects were drawn from a range of Sydney retailers complemented by original Australian paintings and prints by Picasso, Miro, Klee and others. Swedish glass, pottery and porcelain were amongst the international selection of “the very best taste in modern design”.⁴⁸ Modern appliances and utensils were also included in the exhibition, at a time when industrial design was a fledgling profession in Australia, prefacing the inclusion of an industrial fair at Sweden at David Jones’.⁴⁹ For DJs’, Sweden at David Jones’ provided a spectacle that directly expanded these endeavours while “stimulating the imaginations and fantasies” of its customers.⁵⁰

The Physical Temporality of Sweden at David Jones’

Sweden at David Jones’ was thematically organised across DJs’ three city centre locations. The Cultural Exhibition was staged in DJs’ Art Gallery and the Elizabeth Street store, The Swedish Ideal Model Home in the George Street Homemaker store and The Industrial Exhibition in the Market Street Men’s Store.

The centrepiece of The Cultural Exhibition was a museum display of Swedish applied arts and everyday craft in DJs’ seventh floor mezzanine Art Gallery, arranged and selected by the executive of the SSF and designed by Myrstrand (Fig. 1). At the entrance to the Gallery, visitors were greeted by a presentation of the Royal House of Sweden mounted on a timber and steel showcase designed by Myrstrand. On the Gallery side, alternating niches displayed ceramics, glass, stainless steel, woven baskets and wooden products (Fig. 2). Along the left-hand wall of the gallery, a row of deep-framed timber showcases supported on Nisse and Kasja Strinning’s String Design legs, framed Anders Beckman’s pictorial Cavalcade Across Sweden, a series of large black and white photographs and text describing Swedish life, culture and handicrafts. The panels presented Stockholm, agriculture, paper and forestry, sports, Swedish wilderness, shipping, steel industry, democratic policy, technology, and the welfare state. The overarching narrative was one of humanistic progress, welfare, modernity and democracy. Within the main floor of the Gallery, Myrstrand designed and arranged groups of display tables made of pressed wood shavings painted in alternating light and dark grey supported on String Design legs and lit by low hung plastic pendant lights designed by Hans Bergström for Ateljé Lyktan (Fig. 3). They displayed exclusive glassware from Orrefors, Kosta, Gullarskrufs, Johansfors, Målerås and Skrufs, and silver from Hugo Strömdahl, Ceson, Silva and Sigurd Person. Glass, steel and acrylic display cases mounted on top of the tables held the more delicate objects. Along the right-hand wall similar tables and display cases exhibited ceramics from Upsala-Ekeby, Karlskrona, Gustavsberg and Rörstrand, and a casual setting of lounge chairs and a low table by Bruno Mathsson, with a colourful display of contemporary Swedish textiles hung behind. The short stage wall opposite the entrance, had a background of further abstract Swedish textiles.⁵¹ In front of this display tables presented various types of hemslöjd (home crafts). The Canberra Cup was also on display in the Art Gallery, on loan to DJs’ from the Australian Government. The overall effect was a floating arrangement, highlighting the objects on display (Fig. 4). Many of the objects were intended for sale at the close of the exhibition, apart from several of the museum pieces on loan. Adjacent to the Art Gallery, DJs Pink Room was transformed into a generous reading room furnished with more Bruno Mathsson tables and chairs where visitors could read English translations of Swedish texts and admire reproductions of contemporary Swedish paintings. The seventh floor Great Restaurant foyer displayed a scale model of Ragnar Östberg’s Stockholm Town Hall, completed in 1923, a direct reference to the model of St Peter’s Basilica displayed at Italy in Macy’s.

Figure 1. Composite view of the Cultural Exhibition designed by Gunnar Myrstrand in David Jones’ Art Gallery, June 1954. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Swedish Embassy in Australia.

Figure 2. Display screen inside the entrance to David Jones’ Art Gallery. Designed by Gunnar Myrstrand. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Swedish Embassy in Australia.

Figure 3. Detail of one of Myrstrand’s display tables at the “test” installation at Frey’s Warehouse in Stockholm, March 22, 1954. Composite timber tabletops, transparent acrylic corner supports and black “String” legs. Photographer Sune Sundahl. ArkDes, Stockholm. ARKM.1988-111 -16,331. Public domain.

Figure 4. Overview of the “test” installation at Frey’s Warehouse in Stockholm, March 22, 1954, shows the lightness of Myrstrand’s design and floating qualities. Photographer Sune Sundahl. ArkDes, Stockholm. ARKM.1988-111 -16,332. Public domain.

The exhibition sits between the Swedish contribution to Design in Scandinavia and Myrstrand’s design for Sweden’s highly successful display at the Milan Triennial of 1954. All three exhibitions share remarkable similarities employing simple tables and glass showcases on diminutive legs with low hung pendant lighting. Myrstrand studied at the SSF design school in Gothenburg between 1945–48 before moving to Stockholm and working in the SSF exhibition department between 1949 and 1956. As exhibition architect for the SSF, he was responsible for several important exhibitions at Nationalmuseum Stockholm and abroad, including display apartments in new housing developments in Sweden. He went on to become a successful architect and furniture designer setting up practice in 1950 with Sven Engström (1922–91), a former student of Swedish furniture designer Carl Malmsten. Myrstrand and Engström met at the SFF while designing exhibitions, running courses and presenting seminars.⁵² Several of their furniture designs were featured in the Model Home.

Anders Beckman graduated from the Technical School in Stockholm (now Konstfack) in 1930 before opening his own advertising agency. He was the celebrated functionalist designer behind many Swedish exhibition displays and posters for the SSF, including H55 in Helsingborg and Sweden’s pavilion at the New York World’s Fair in 1939, where the concept of “Swedish Modern” was launched. He founded Beckman’s School of Design in Stockholm with the Swedish designer Göta Trägårdh (1904–84) in 1939.⁵³ Beckman’s contribution to Sweden at David Jones’ encompassed graphic design, advertising, a revolving May-Pole on the ground floor of DJs’ Elizabeth Street store, window displays and the poster for the exposition. DJs’ in-house advertising department produced a catalogue, swing tags, stickers and additional graphic materials for the event, likely to be the work of Australian designer Gordon Andrews (1914–2001) who was working with DJs’ at the time. Neither Myrstrand nor Beckman travelled to Sydney for the exhibition.

The centrepiece of the George Street Homemaker store was the fifth floor Swedish “Ideal” Model Home. Eight “rooms”, designed and furnished by Myrstrand, featured modern Swedish furniture, lighting and textiles arranged in what was described as a typical Swedish manner. Six cubic “rooms”, formed using slim metal tubing, were located along the centre of the floor in a staggered arrangement allowing for an additional two rooms between. Abstract furnishing textiles were attached between the frames to form walls and ceilings (Fig. 5). The rooms were arranged with examples of recent Swedish domestic furniture and furnishings in familiar bedroom, sitting and study settings complete with carpets and rugs (Fig. 6). They presented the types of pared back modern interiors that were being promoted in Australian homemaker magazines at the time. It was the first time most of the furniture and furnishings had been on display in Australia. They included timber furniture by Bruno Mathsson, Carl Axel Acking, Myrstrand and Engström, and Gunnar Eklöf’s ergonomic Åkerblom chairs, that were amongst those that had initially inspired the local version of “Swedish Modern”.⁵⁴ The furniture had been imported on a strict return basis and was therefore not available to purchase. Initially, DJs’ was apprehensive about exhibiting Swedish furniture due to prohibitive customs tariffs. Sweden however was keen to enter the Australian furniture market and offered DJs’ “absolute rock-bottom prices” to offset the high duties.⁵⁵ The furniture met with an enthusiastic public response and was subsequently retained and sold through DJs’ George Street store to address a “growing demand for functional furniture”.⁵⁶

Figure 5. Myrstrand’s Interior VI of the Swedish Model Home in David Jones’ George Street store, June 1954. Furniture by Carl Axel Acking, Bertil Fridhagen and Axel Barsso for AB Svenska Möbelfabrikerna Bodafors. Fabrics by Susan Gröndal and Gun Rosén for Susan Gröndal Handtrycksverkstad Stockholm. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Swedish Embassy in Australia.

Figure 6. Myrstrand’s Interior I of the Swedish Model Home in David Jones’ George Street store, June 1954. Furniture designed by Karl Erik Eksellus for AB J.O.Carlssons Möbelindustri Vetlanda, fabrics by Tabergs Yllefabriks AB, Smalands Taberg and Mölnlycke Vafveri AB Göteborg. Photographer unknown. Courtesy Swedish Embassy in Australia.

A fully functional Swedish kitchen, designed by Sylvia Norlin (1919-) displayed the latest innovations in user interactions, tools and equipment. This was the first time a kitchen based on the Swedish kitchen standards of 1950 was shown in Australia. The standards drew on decades of research conducted by Hemmens Forskningsinstitut (Home Research Institute), collected in the recent Swedish publication God bostad 1954.⁵⁷ The kitchen was assembled in Australia to detailed plans and specifications provided by Norlin’s Kitchen Planning Office, Johanneshov. It featured pale beech veneered cupboards, a double oven with a window and light, an Andersson & Nordfeldt dishwasher, Orrefors and Boda glassware, Gense cutlery, ASEA fluorescent lighting, a Luxus lamp, String Design dining table with teak veneered top and greenish blue Åkerblom chairs. The kitchen, and many of the products, including the newly introduced Wettex dishcloth, sewing machines and vacuum cleaners were demonstrated by assistants dressed in traditional Swedish costume. The Swedish kitchen was lauded for having the “cleanliness and order of a hospital theatre” ⁵⁸ and apparently had “the women gasping and the men surreptitiously taking measurements.”⁵⁹

All fixtures, fittings and lighting for the Cultural Exhibition and Model Home were planned, designed, drawn and fabricated in Sweden adding a genuine extra Swedish touch. The SSF left nothing to chance in ensuring the exhibition was of the highest standard. The selected objects were delivered to Frey’s Auctioneers warehouse in Stockholm direct from the manufacturers. There, the Cultural Exhibition and Model Home were fully erected, populated with objects and furniture as a test installation, before being extensively photographed, dismantled, and packed in shipping crates for their journey to Sydney (Fig. 7). Photographs of Myrstrand assembling the tables and display cases for the Stockholm test installation were included in a book of step-by-step assembly instructions for the DJs’ team in Sydney, detailing the SSF’s preferred process for both the unpacking and placement of objects and labels (Fig. 8). This attention to detail underscored Sweden’s reputation in Australia for high standards and precision, a decisive factor in the import of the Swedish prefabricated houses by the Australian military in the early 1950s.⁶⁰

Figure 7. View of the “test” installation at Frey’s Warehouse in Stockholm, March 22, 1954, showing the combination of textiles, display furniture and ceramic objects. Photographer Sune Sundahl. ArkDes, Stockholm. ARKM.1988-111 -16,333. Public domain.

Figure 8. Gunnar Myrstrand demonstrating the assembly of the glass and acrylic showcases at the “test” exhibition at Frey’s Warehouse, Stockholm, March 22, 1954. From a series of photos included in an instruction book for the assembly in Sydney. Photographer Sune Sundahl. ArkDes, Stockholm. ARKM.1988-111 -16,346. Public domain.

Penny Sparke has described how the modern interior reaches beyond that of the domestic and that room constructions at exhibitions and trade fairs represented “idealised domestic spaces” that “stimulated desire and encouraged consumers to construct their own modish interiors through the purchase of a new armchair or a piece of curtain fabric.”⁶¹ The Swedish “Ideal” Model Home was located adjacent to the offices of the NSW Small Homes Service. The initiative, established in 1953 in collaboration with The Sun-Herald, Australian Home Beautiful and the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, aimed to provide architect designed home plans priced for the average wage earner to raise the level of modern design appreciation in the population. DJs’ George Street Store was a one stop shop for the modern homemaker. Plans could be purchased on the fifth floor from the Small Homes Service, while furnishing ideas could be found in the Swedish model home. Across the floor customers could purchase Swedish light fittings, an Electrolux vacuum cleaner or a Husqvarna sewing machine to make up curtains of Swedish furnishing fabrics purchased on the second floor. On the third floor, everything for your streamlined Swedish kitchen could be found from everyday pots and pans, utensils and “the prettiest pots imaginable”.⁶² Finally, Swedish crystal vases and ceramic objects, admired across town in DJs’ Art Gallery, could be purchased on the first floor to add a finishing touch.

A significant point of departure from the 1951 Macy’s fair that had inspired Sweden at David Jones’ was the Industrial Exhibition in DJs’ Market Street Men’s Store. Upon entering the Men’s Store, alongside Swedish shirts, suits, gloves, and hats visitors encountered the first Volvo in Australia in a rich claret red vying for attention with a shiny Stal Turbo jet engine.⁶³ Two floors up, a SAAB Safir four seat plane was displayed. Prior to the opening the delivery of the plane generated much publicity as it was craned in through one of the store’s third floor windows. There, 69 exhibitors displayed everything from Swedish tools, rock drilling equipment, an automobile, sewing machines, marine engines, office equipment, and refrigerators to industrial, mechanical and office equipment that was a major drawcard for Australian industry. Exhibitors included Husqvarna motorcycles, Nymanbolagen mopeds, newly introduced Penta turbo diesel marine engines and Atlas Diesel light-weight rock drills and ASEA generators installed in Stage One of the Snowy Mountains Hydro Scheme, one of Australia’s largest infrastructure projects of the era. The information office of the General Export Association of Sweden was furnished with Åtvidaberg desks, chairs and document cabinets and Swedish typewriters, calculators and adding machines. This represented a significant goodwill initiative as many of the products on display were not sold by DJs’ and were without Australian representation.

Everyday Goods are Beautiful

Sydney women have lost their hearts to glass pots and pans, to Swedish furniture and furnishings, to cleverly designed kitchenware, and the lovely, clean streamlines the Swedes seem to be happy to apply to everything, whether it’s a turbo jet engine or a thimble. Mr Sydney, too, has thrilled to the touch and swish of fibre-glass fishing rods, hunting jackets with built-in seat warmers, the sheer delight of handling beautifully balanced and designed tools for all purposes.⁶⁴

The above excerpt of a review from August 1954 sums up the broad appeal of the exposition to Sydneysiders. Building on the earlier awareness of “Swedish Modern” and the “Swedish Style”, the exposition appealed to both consumers and commentators. From the exclusive objects of The Cultural Exhibition presented in a gallery setting, to aspirational and affordable objects from the same designers and factories on the retail floors; to the Model Home with its streamlined, modern furniture, subdued lighting and colourful fabrics, critics and visitors appreciated both Sweden and its modern design that was considered both humanistic and beautiful. Sweden at David Jones’ positioned Sweden as a distinctly modern and progressive nation, something timely and aspirational to Australian audiences. Amongst the 300,000 visitors to the exposition, correspondents from across Australia travelled to Sydney to see Sweden first hand.⁶⁵ They published enthusiastic reviews, editorials and reports praising the “superb design” and “remarkable simplicity” of the objects on display in what was described as “the best trade display seen here”.⁶⁶

To coincide with the opening of the exhibition, David Jones’ arranged a special 12-page supplement to the June 16 edition of The Sydney Morning Herald. Entitled “Modern Sweden”, it provided a broad context to all things Swedish alongside advertisements from the many Swedish manufacturers and local importers of the goods featured in the exhibition. This included Sweden’s neutrality in world affairs, farming, architecture, arts and crafts, social welfare, labour unions, steel and timber industry, sports, food, recipes, aircraft and shipping. Local magazines published features on Swedish design and cookery and the popularity of Swedish food increased.⁶⁷ The Swedish smorgasbord served at DJs’ Grand Restaurant during the exposition became an ongoing item on the menu. The NSW Wine and Food Society chose a Swedish Smorgasbord theme for its August 1954 dinner while food writers encouraged readers to adopt the cold Smorgasbord as an alternative to the traditional hot Christmas lunch in the Australian summer.⁶⁸ The society pages of the weekend newspapers reported that at Sydney’s private parties “cheers” had been replaced by “skål”.⁶⁹

The exhibition of applied arts in DJs’ Art Gallery was of a scale that was unprecedented in Australia. The display, and indeed much of the exposition, was more suited to a museum than a department store. Art glass, ceramics and furniture attracted considerable attention and their designers were profiled in the press. Vicke Lindstrand’s Kosta glass in “jewel colours – ruby, amethyst and green”⁷⁰ proved popular and “the apparent austerity of colour”⁷¹ of the “superb collection of ceramics”⁷² by Stig Lindberg for Gustavsberg Fabriker and Gunnar Nylund for Rörstrand garnered considerable attention (Fig. 8). Sweden at David Jones’ prompted the Sydney Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences to expand its modest collection of Swedish applied art and design with a collection of modern Gustavsbergs and Rörstrand ceramics that had been shown at DJs’.⁷³

There was substantial interest in the exposition from retailers in both Sydney and Melbourne. DJs’ Sydney competitor, Farmer’s Emporium, made an unsuccessful attempt to poach the exposition during its organisation; much to the astonishment of the Swedes. In March 1954, Myer Emporium in Melbourne offered to host the exposition after DJs’ across 20,000 square feet of its Lonsdale Street store. Without the financial backing to extend the exposition The General Export Association had no choice but to decline the offer. The owner of modernist emporium Anderson’s Home Furnishers in Melbourne wrote enthusiastically of his visit to the exposition in Sydney, in an unsuccessful bid to receive the furnished rooms of The Model Home, along with items from the DJs’ Art Gallery to display at his store.⁷⁴ The exposition was captured in a Movietone newsreel that screened in cinemas Australia-wide during July 1954, broadening its reach and highlighting the exhibition’s appeal, uniqueness and significance.

Although inspired by Italy in Macy’s of 1951, Sweden at David Jones’ evaded the negative critique levelled at the American exhibition. Gio Ponti (1891–1979), Italian architect and editor of Domus magazine, condemned Macy’s buyers for working with Italian manufacturers to “Americanise” their products to better appeal to American tastes.⁷⁵ By contrast, DJs’ buyers followed buying itineraries that were carefully arranged and recommended by the Swedish General Export Association and the SSF, meaning any “taste making” was enacted from the Swedish end. Informed Australian architects, designers and decorators were amongst the thousands of visitors to the exposition.⁷⁶ Interior designer Marion Hall Best (1905–88), a former director of DJs’ Art Gallery, employed a low hung Ateljé Lytkan pendant from the Cultural Exhibition in her minimal interior at the second SIDA Rooms on View exhibition at Taubmans Gallery in 1955. Best would become a major actor in the continued success of Scandinavian design in Australia over the following decades.

Sweden at David Jones’ presented Australia with a highly visible example of successful trade promotion. The Swedish Chamber of Commerce published a special exhibition issue of its journal, The Trade Review, covering the exposition in detail, while the Monthly Trade and Shipping Review lauded the trade opportunities between the two nations brought about by exposition.⁷⁷ Writing in response to the exposition, Australian journalist Charles Buttrose (1909–99) proclaimed “Australia must get out and woo world trade” and “sell more stuff overseas”, challenging the Australian Government to “brighten up their trade promotional ideas”. According to Buttrose, Australia’s foreign trade promotion lacked “steam” and Australian goods had a poor reputation overseas for being “inferior quality, highly priced and poorly packaged”. He emphasised that the Swedes had “made none of the errors commonly made” by Australia and was “an object lesson in foreign trade promotion.” Buttrose concluded that Sweden “planned big and they got results … [they] displayed (and sold) a rich variety of goods of a uniformly high quality. Everything was artistically packaged and displayed - a testament to Swedish good taste as well as Swedish industrial skill.”⁷⁸ In Sweden, the Sydney exposition was declared “a distinct success, and that no mean proportion of the 2,000,000 population of that city talked, ate and bought “Swedish” during the two-and-a-half weeks’ run of the show.”⁷⁹

Building on the success of Sweden at David Jones’ and returning to the Macy’s Italian event that inspired it, an even larger exposition Italy at David Jones’ opened at DJs’ Sydney in July 1955, before Perth and further satellite events in Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne, and Wagga Wagga.⁸⁰ The following November, DJs’ Chairman Sir Charles Lloyd Jones was presented with the Insignia of the Royal Order of Vasa by King Gustav of Sweden for his goodwill services by way of Sweden at David Jones’. These expositions developed a new type of interlinked commercial and cultural diplomacy and became a regular feature in DJs’ annual calendar over the next 30 years. Plans commenced for a second Sweden at David Jones’ in 1961 but were abandoned after the sudden death of David Lloyd Jones. DJs’ continued with a second Italy at David Jones’ in 1966 before staging further events of a reduced scale showcasing Asia, the Mediterranean, USA, Germany, Great Britain, Scandinavia, Denmark, Finland, and other countries and regions. These exhibitions presented constructed interiors that worked in unison with the design objects they displayed and performed a crucial role in circulating and increasing awareness of international ideas and cultures in Australia. Amidst the rise of mass consumer culture of the 1950s, DJs’ placed design and industry centre stage seizing what Peter McNeil has described as “the utopian rhetoric of post-war reconstruction and the newly elevated status of the designer”.⁸¹ Local importers, galvanised by the success of the exposition, would become important advocates for further Swedish and Scandinavian exhibitions in the years that followed that would result in the much-delayed Australian edition of Design in Scandinavia in 1968.⁸²

Conclusion. Enduring Legacy

Sweden at David Jones’ has remained a little-known and somewhat mythical event in Australia. In Sweden, it has remained a forgotten episode in the extensive legacy of Swedish cultural and design diplomacy during the twentieth century. This paper has established its significance in connecting Australia to the circulation of international design in the 1950s and the design diplomacy activities of the SSF. It has introduced Gunnar Myrstrand as the exhibition architect and the exposition has been identified as the “missing piece” between the Swedish contributions to the North American travelling exhibition Design in Scandinavia and Sweden’s display at the Milan Triennial of 1954, bringing Australia into this important history.

While awareness of Swedish design and architecture had previously come to Australia via a British or North American pathway, Sweden at David Jones’ was significant as it brought increased awareness direct from Sweden to Australia. It was the only large-scale, officially sanctioned Swedish exposition in a retail setting that simultaneously displayed industrial goods alongside applied arts, crafts and consumer goods. Sweden at David Jones’ was unique as the first exposition of its kind in Australia and as an example of what was possible through the interlinked role of national design organisations and export associations, something that Australia had yet to develop. The exposition arrived in Australia at the height of the popularity of “Swedish Modern” and at a crucial moment in the international promotion of Swedish and Scandinavian design and provided DJs’ with a blueprint for international promotions over the following decades. The spectacle of Sweden at David Jones’ presented Sweden in all its breadth and depth in Sydney in 1954 where visitors were able to experience Swedish design and culture “first hand” at a time when international travel was out of reach of the average Australian. By staging the exhibition in a department store, Sweden presented an exposition that was “less about national prowess” and more about inspiring an already Sweden conscious Australian public and encouraging them to consume more Swedish products.⁸³ The idealised modern interiors, table settings and window displays full of desirable objects for the home came with the cultural validation of being displayed concurrently in DJs’ Art Gallery.

Sweden at David Jones’ represented a globalising moment in Australia, contributing to the emergence of a global culture and multicultural society, fuelled by increased immigration. While it was brief and transient, it was more than a fleeting glimpse. Sweden at David Jones’ was Sweden’s “shop window” in Sydney presenting something seemingly familiar and slightly exotic. It effectively presented the union of an aspirational and ideological vision for how the modern Australian interior might develop through a geopolitical exemplar that merged modernity, democracy, welfare, and beauty in everyday things. In the wake of the exposition, Swedish imports increased and many of the featured products, machines and equipment made their way into Australian homes, national collections, industry, and infrastructure.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This paper is the first instalment of a larger project that explores the circulation, transmission, diffusion and promotion of international design ideas and practises in Australia through David Jones’ department store’s sustained program of international expositions between 1950–80.

2. Advertisement, The Saturday Herald, June 12, 1954.

3. Advertisement, The Sun, June 15, 1954.

4. Hark, “Swedish Industry Scores Success at Big One Nation Show in Sydney,” Sverige Nytt, 26, 1954.

5. Penny Sparke, The Modern Interior (London: Reaktion Books, 2008), 14.

6. Hark, “Swedish Industry”

7. Sparke, The Modern Interior, 15.

8. The exposition is referred to as “Sweden in Australia” in Jonathan Sweet, “Orrefors in Australia, A Harbinger of Modernism,” in Orrefors a Century of Swedish Glass Making, ed. Kerstin Wickman (Byggforlaget-Kultur, 1998); and in Robert Bell, Nordic Wave: A study of the reception and influence of Scandinavian design in Australia (PhD. Diss. Australian National University, 2007). Both instances are likely to derive from period newspapers.

9. Sylvia Micheli, “Building European Taste in Broader Communities: The Role of the David Jones Stores in the Promotion of Design and Architecture in Australia.” EAHN Turin 2014, June 19–21 (Torino, Politecnico 2014): 824–832; Sylvia Micheli, “I Made a Choice: Enrico Taglietti Citizen of the World in Canberra,” Fabrications 30, no. 3 (2020): 346–370, https://doi.org/10.1080/10331867.2020.1827788.

10. Sweet, Orrefors, 190.

11. In Australia, the archives of the Swedish Chamber of Commerce held by the Embassy of Sweden in Australia and the David Jones Art Gallery Archives at the Art Gallery of New South Wales have provided rich documentation through photographs, correspondence, drawings and press clippings. David Jones’s corporate archive contains duplicates of much of the photographic documentation and press clippings held by the Embassy of Sweden. In Sweden, I found extensive material in the form of drawings, photographs, and correspondence relating to the design and curation of The Cultural Exhibition and Swedish Model Home in the Svensk Form archives. In the General Export Association of Sweden archive held by the Swedish National Archives I was rewarded with exhaustive photographic documentation of all aspects of the exposition along with extensive correspondence between the various stakeholders and exhibitors. In the archives of Anders Beckman at the Swedish Royal Library, I found iterations of the exhibition poster, early correspondence and press clippings. Finally, in the ever-expanding Swedish Digital Archive I found further photographic documentation of the “test” set-up of The Cultural Exhibition and Swedish Model Home from the collections of ArkDes, the Architecture and Design Museum in Stockholm. I wish to thank all these institutions for their assistance with my research and for granting access to their collections.

12. Ellen McArthur, “The Role of Department Stores in the Evolution of Marketing: Primary Source Records from Australia,” Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, Vol. 5 No. 4 (2013): 449–470. https://doi.org/10.1108/JHRM-11-2013-008; Dale Miller, and Bill Merrilees, (2016), “Department store innovation: David Jones Ltd., Australia, 1876–1915,” Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, 8:3 (2016): 396–415. https://doi.org/10.1108/JHRM-01-2014 0001; Dale Miller, and Bill Merrilees, “Fashion and commerce: a historical perspective on Australian fashion retailing, 1880–1920,” International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 32:8 (2004): 394–402. https://doi.org/10.1108/09590550410546214; Helen O’Neill, David Jones: 175 years (Sydney, New South Publishing, 2013).

13. See Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Catherine Dossin, and Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel, eds, Circulations in the Global History of Art (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2016).s

14. Jessica Hecht and Mark Donfried, Eds., Searching for a Cultural Diplomacy ;(Oxford: Berghahn, 2010).

15. Kjetil Fallan, “Milanese Mediations: Crafting Scandinavian Design at the Triennali di Milano,” Konsthistorisk tidskrift. 83. no. 1 (2014): 1–23, https://doi.org/10.1080/00233609.2013.878389.

16. Kerstin Wickman “Design Olympics – the Milan Triennials” in Widar Halén, and Kerstin Wickman, Eds., Scandinavian Design Beyond the Myth: Fifty Years of Design from the Nordic Countries (Stockholm: Arvinius, 2003); Gay McDonald, “The Modern American Home as Soft Power: Finland, MoMA and the ‘American Home 1953’ Exhibition,” Journal of Design History 23 (2010): 387–408; Greg Castillo, Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design, ;(Manchester, University of Manchester Press, 2010).

17. Stephanie Amerian, “Buying European: The Marshall Plan and American Department Stores,” Diplomatic History, 39:1 (2015): 45–69. https://doi.org/10.1093/dh/dht130; Catherine Rossi, Crafting Design in Italy (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2015).; Florence Brachet-Champsaur, “Buying abroad, selling in Paris: the 1953 Italian fair at Galeries Lafayette.” In Regina Lee Blaszczyk and Véronique Pouillard, Eds., European Fashion: The Creation of a Global Industry, (Manchester, Manchester University Press 2018).

18. Jane Hamlyn, “The Present Trend in Interior Decoration,” The Home: An Australian Quarterly 19/8 (1 August 1938) 54–55; Anne Stewart, “Home Decorating Abroad,” The Sun (17 April 1938), 23.

19. Anon, “A Swedish Designer’s Home,” The Australian Home Beautiful, February (1950): 23.

20. Anon, “Our Furnishings Lack Taste,” The Australian Home Beautiful, November (1959): 15–17

21. Conlon, Matthew, Funkis Sydney: Architecture from Sweden’s Welfare State for Sydney’s Mid-Twentieth Century Slum Clearance-Rehousing Projects. (PhD diss., University of Sydney, 2011), 312.

22. G. Howard Smith, “Sweden is Modern,” Building and engineering 8, (Master Builders’ Federation of Australia & Illuminating Engineering Society of Australia, N.S.W.) August 25 (1947): 44–45.

23. The stjärnhus (star-house) plan was created by Swedish architects Backström and Reinius and first realised in their 1946 Gröndal housing development in Stockholm. See, Lucy Creagh, “From acceptera to Vällingby: The Discourse on Individuality and Community in Sweden (1931–54),” in Footprint Delft Architecture Theory Journal (2011). DOI: 10.7480/footprint.2.737. “‘Star-Plan’ Flats will Replace City Slum,” Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney NSW, 29th April 1948, 2. See also, Conlon, Funkis Sydney.

24. The Swedish houses were built in Georges Heights Sydney, for the Australian Navy, Lithgow, Adelaide and Melbourne. Further reports of plans to import to Perth, 2000 to Brisbane, and imported by Myer Emporium Melbourne. See: Duncan Maxwell and Mathew Aitchison “Lessons from Sweden: How Australia Can Learn from Swedish Industrialised Building,” in Modular and Offsite Construction (MOC) Summit Proceedings (2016) https://doi.org/10.29173/mocs24.190; Abdulaziz Alshabib and Sam Ridgway ;(2020) “ASA 302 @ Georges Heights: Swedish Timber Prefabs in Australia,” Fabrications, 30:3,323–345, DOI: 10.1080/10331867.2020.1826687

25. Robin Boyd, “The truth about Sweden,” The Age, 6 Feb (1951): 6.

26. “Sir John Sulman Award,” Architecture: an Australasian review of architecture and the allied arts and sciences Vol. 41 No. 4 (Oct-Dec 1953), 90.

27. There were approximately 2200 Swedes in Australia in 1954. See “Sweden-born Community Information Summary,” Australian Government Department of Home Affairs, Accessed August 24, 2023, https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/mca/files/2016-cis-sweden.PDF

28. See Jeff Werner, “What was so Swedish about Swedish Modern Anyway?” in Johanna Vakkari, ed., Mind and Matter – Selected papers of Nordik 2009 Conference for Art Historians (Helsinki: Taidehistorian Seura, 2010): 254–61.

29. For a detailed discussion of Nordic influences in Australian furniture, see Mark Ian Jones “Nordic Design Down Under. Swedish Modern and Scandinavian Design in Australia” in Shona Kallestrup and Charlotte Ashby, Eds., Nordic Design in Translation: The Circulation of Objects, Ideas and Practices (Bern, Peter Lang, 2023). 211–38.

30. Risom was Danish but had worked for NK in Stockholm where he met Mathsson and Aalto. Rapson and Risom were interpreting the 1930s furniture of Aalto and Mathsson. The “Snelling Line” was featured in David Jones’ George Street store window displays during Sweden at David Jones’. This included the Series 464 armchair, upholstered in Swedish fabric, a side table, and a Snelling Line module storage unit, emphasising their association as Swedish style.

31. Kirsty Grant, Mid-century Modern: Australian Furniture Design (Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, 2014):134.

32. Sweet, Orrefors, 190.

33. In 1936, American journalist Marquis Child’s published the bestselling book, Sweden the Middle Way, a study of the Swedish reform system of collectivism coupled with individual enterprise. The book was widely available and reviewed in Australian newspapers. The first Swedish-Australian Trade Agreement was initiated in 1946 by economist and future Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia Herbert Coombs, who studied Swedish government policy in the 1930s. This, and newspaper features such as Sweden’s middle way assures her in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph in 1946, demonstrate that Sweden was seen as aspirational by Australian commentators.

34. Amerian, “Buying European”

35. Justus Osterman to Hans Swedberg, July 10, (1953) Riksarkivet, Stockholm.

36. Wickman, “Design Olympics”

37. Hans Swedberg to Bengt Westin, October 5, (1953) Riksarkivet, Stockholm.

38. In April 1954 Swedish news reports provided further details including photographs of the test exhibition and a textile design by Inez Svensson.

39. Swedish Chamber of Commerce, The Trade Review of the Swedish Chamber of Commerce for Australia, New Zealand and South Sea Islands. 41, no. 7, July, 1954.

40. Rolf von Heidenstam, “Greetings to Australia” in Swedish Foreign Commerce (Stockholm, General Export Association of Sweden, 1954).

41. “One Stop Warhol Shop” Carnegie Magazine, accessed January 30, 2023. https://carnegiemuseums.org/magazine-archive/2000/sepoct/feat5.html

42. Ulrika Ruding, “A Hundred Years of Orrefors,” in Barbro Hovstadius, Ed., Orrefors 100 Years, (Stockholm, Nationalmuseum Stockholm, 1998): 41.

43. Gregor Paulsson, Vackrare vardagsvara, (Stockholm, Svenska slöjdföreningen, 1919).

44. Gunnela Ivanov, Vackrare vardagsvara - design för alla? Gregor Paulsson och Svenska slöjdföreningen 1915–1925, PhD Diss., Umeå universitet, 2004, p. 307.

45. Charles Lloyd Jones, “The four I’s we need,” Daily Telegraph, October 30 (1945).

46. Charles Lloyd Jones, “The History of David Jones: Address to Members of the Royal Historical Society,” November 29 (1955), (David Jones Archives).

47. M. P. Ferrandiere, What is Good Modern Design? Exhibition Catalogue, Art Gallery of New South Wales Archive.

48. M. P. Ferrandiere, to E. E. Wahlquist, September 18, 1951. DJs Art Gallery Archives, AGNSW, Sydney.

49. American kitchen units, electric range, refrigerator, freezer, dishwasher, pressure cooker and coffee machine.

50. Sparke, The Modern Interior, 62.

51. Susan Gröndals Verkstad; “Ställverk” in blue, “Linje” in dark blue, and “Diabolo” in yellow. Sten Hultberg Textiltryckeri Dala-Floda: “Kastanj” in red by Sofia Widén, “Kul” in yellow/green by Lisa Rising, “Momento” in turquoise by Mari Simmulson, “Bastfläta” in grey, “Tampico” in white, “Tang” in light grey and “Rustik” in turquoise by Sten Hultberg.

52. I wish to thank Jonas Myrstrand for the biographical information.

53. “Then and now,” Beckmans, Accessed August 24, 2023, https://beckmans.se/en/om-beckmans/designhogskolan/

54. The rooms were furnished with furniture from: Firma Karl Mathson, Folkrörelsernas Konstfrämjande, J.O.Carlsson, AB Svenska Möbelfabrikerna (Gunnar Eklöf “Åkerblom” chairs), AB Nässjö Stolfabrik, ESE-Möbler AB, Broderna Edmans Stolfabrik, Skarabrogs Möbelindustri. Textiles and carpets from: Tabergs Yllefabrik AB, complimented with walls hung with fabrics from Sten Hultbergs Textiltryckeri, Säters Väveri AB and Light fittings from Ateljé Lyktan.

55. Hans Swedberg to Swedish Chamber of Commerce, March 3 (1954) Riksarkivet, Stockholm.

56. Anon, “Finale to Swedish Exhibition,” The David Jones Store News, December (1954): 3.

57. God Bostad, (Stockholm, Bostadsstyrelsens, 1954) translates as Good Dwelling or Good Residence.

58. Anon, “Every Thing - And The Kitchen Sink,” Sydney Morning Herald, June 17 (1954): 3.

59. Anon, Women’s Letters, Sydney, The Bulletin, June 23 (1954): 18.

60. See Alshabib and Ridgway “ASA 302 @ Georges Heights.”

61. Sparke, The Modern Interior, 15.

62. Isla Brook, “Swedish Exhibition Brings Streamline to Kitchen,” The Mail, June 19 (Adelaide, 1954): 46.

63. The Volvo PV444 was introduced in Australia a year prior to the USA. After arriving in April, it clocked up 6500 miles of testing for Australian conditions before being shown publicly at Sweden at David Jones’. However, it would not be until 1961 that the first Volvo would be available in the Australian market.

64. Anon, The Hardware Journal, August 2 (1954): 78.

65. Anon, “A Ship Arrives in Sydney Laden with Goods,” The Trade Review of the Swedish Chamber of Commerce for Australia, New Zealand and South Sea Islands, July (Sydney: Shipping Newspapers Ltd., 1954).

66. Anon, “Superb Design Seen in Trade Display,” The Sydney Morning Herald, June 16 (1954): 2.

67. Our home: a magazine for the home owner, August (Sydney, N.S.W.: Building Societies Co-operative Services Association, 1954): 17–23.

68. Maria Kozslik, “Epicures Corner.” The Age, December 17 (Melbourne, 1954): 7.

69. Suzanne, “Roundabout with Suzanne.” The Truth, June 20 (1954): 39.

70. Elizabeth, “Girl about Town.” Muster, June 8 (1954).

71. Anon, “Superb Design Seen in Trade Display,” The Sydney Morning Herald, June 16 (1954).

72. James Gleeson, “Exciting Show of Ceramics,” The Sun, June 17 (1954).

73. Acquired on 10 December 1954.

74. W B Anderson to Swedish Export Association, June 18 (1954). Riksarkivet, Stockholm.

75. Elena Dellapiana, “Italy Creates. Gio Ponti, America and the Shaping of the Italian Design Image,” in Res Mobilis, vol. 7 n. 8 (2018): 20–48; Rossi, Crafting Design in Italy.

76. Following the exposition, an Åkerblom armchair, designed by Gunnar Eklöf, was purchased from DJs’ George Street store by the Sydney architect Brian Griffin. It was donated to the Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences Powerhouse Museum in 2005, object 2005/79/1.

77. Swedish Chamber of Commerce, The Trade Review. Monthly Trade and Shipping Review, July 1954.

78. Charles Buttrose, “Australia Must Get Out and Woo World Trade,” The Daily Telegraph, July 9 (1954): 23.

79. Hark, “Swedish Industry”

80. David Jones’ Archives contains details of Italy at David Jones’ at its Perth store and the events Italy at McWhirters, Wickham Street Brisbane, and Italy at Charles Birks, Rundle Street Adelaide. An associated fashion event, The Italian Parades, presented in partnership with The Australian Woman’s Weekly was also shown in Sydney, Brisbane, Myer Emporium Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, and Wagga Wagga.

81. Peter McNeil, Designing Women: Gender, Modernism and Interior Decoration in Sydney, c1920–1940. (PhD diss., Australian National University, 1993): 3.

82. For a detailed discussion of the 1968–69 Australian iteration of Design in Scandinavia, see Jones, “Nordic Design Down Under,” 232–37.

83. Sparke, The Modern Interior, 68.