
Print, Repeat, Archive: Sven Fristedt’s Work Exhibited in Borås
Sven Fristedt’s patterns have the rare ability to feel both deeply nostalgic and startlingly modern. They carry perhaps a sense of lived experience through memories of curtains in a childhood kitchen, a bold sofa in a neighbour’s house, a duvet cover seen in an old catalogue. Yet, they remain timeless in their rhythm and optimism. On until 5 April 2026, the Textile Museum of Sweden in Borås presents Sven Fristedt – Master of Patterns, a retrospective that brings together seven decades of his work, tracing a career that helped shape Scandinavian textile design as we know it today.
Sven Fristedt in his studio. From "Sven Fristedt – Mästare i mönster" by Anna Lindqvist
Born in 1940, Fristedt studied at Beckmans College of Design and Konstfack in Stockholm before moving to Skåne, where he has lived and worked since his twenties. Early in his career he experimented widely with painting, sculpture, and printmaking, before embracing textile pattern as his primary artistic language. His first industrial designs appeared at the end of the 1950s, and by the 1960s his work had already begun to circulate internationally...
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Image Credits:
Lead: "Plexus", design Sven Fristedt. Curtain fabric 120 cm wide. Large check print in 6 colours. Quality grosgrain. Film print (handprint). Handprinted in Sweden. Plinon Sanfor.
All further images as credited in photo captions.