There are tons of reasons to be depressed right now. Fortunately, the retrospective of architect and designer Josef Frank’s work at the Fashion and Textile Museum is the visual and emotional equivalent of a comforting cup of tea and a nice sit-down.
As you walk into the exhibition you’re greeted by a room of Frank-designed furniture and fabrics, and it’s just lovely. There’s no show-home sterility: with lively prints and pretty colours it feels light, warm and like somewhere you would want to hang your hat. Through the main space, reams of fabric are printed with references from across the world, and all are firmly rooted in nature. It’s all incredibly pertinent too; named Sweden’s most influential designer, Frank was an Austrian Jew who, against a particularly unpleasant backdrop of rising anti-semitism – never a good look – fled Vienna for Stockholm. Printing paradise onto his fabrics and building it through comfort into his design, he developed an outward-looking style that, despite its universality, has become synonymous with Scandinavia. It’s one that continues to look fresh today. We could all do with some of his optimism.
Bright, beautiful and uplifting, this exhibition will send you back out into grey Bermondsey feeling buoyed.