Josef Frank, the Austrian-born Swedish architect and designer, never believed that a house was a machine for living. “It doesn’t matter if you mix old and new, or different styles, colors, and patterns,” he advised in 1958. “The things you like will always blend, by themselves, into a peaceful whole.”
Though not a star like Le Corbusier or Mies van der Rohe, Frank thrilled with his furniture, lighting, and textiles for Stockholm retailer Svenskt Tenn. But it’s the fabrics (check out “Josef Frank: Patterns—Furniture—Painting” at London’s Fashion and Textile Museum through May 7) that have won him cult status. “The freer the pattern, the better,” Frank said of his high-wire creations, dense with flowers, fruits, birds, mountains, and waterways in surreal color combinations.
The designer’s printed linens are “imaginative and…
