Elsa Gullberg (14 March 1886 – 1 March 1984) was a Swedish interior architect and textile designer. She was a pioneer of modern textile design in Sweden and played an instrumental role in transforming the textile industry. She was one of the renowned Swedish textile designers including Erik Wettergren,

Carl Bergsten Carl Gustaf Bergsten (10 May 1879 in Norrköping - 22 April 1935 in Stockholm) was a Swedish architect. He graduated in 1901 from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology and three years later from the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stock ...

and Gregor Paulsson, who worked to modernize textile industries in Sweden.

Biography

Elsa Gullberg was born on 14 March 1886 in

Malmö Malmö (, ; da, Malmø ) is the largest city in the Swedish county (län) of Scania (Skåne). It is the third-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm and Gothenburg, and the sixth-largest city in the Nordic region, with a municipal pop ...

, Sweden. She studied textile crafts at the Art and Design School in Stockholm. After completing her studies, she started her career as an assistant to Lilli Zickerman, an influential figure in textile design, at the Association for Swedish Homework. She was part of a group of reformers who wanted to modernize the production process of Swedish textile industries. She visited a number of textile firms in different countries to incorporate new ideas in the Swedish textile sector. She was highly influenced by the designing and production process undertaken at the

Deutscher Werkbund The Deutscher Werkbund (English: "German Association of Craftsmen"; ) is a German association of artists, architects, designers and industrialists established in 1907. The Werkbund became an important element in the development of modern arch ...

and Dresdner Werkstätte in Germany, and the

Wiener Werkstätte The Wiener Werkstätte (engl.: ''Vienna Workshop''), established in 1903 by the graphic designer and painter Koloman Moser, the architect Josef Hoffmann and the patron Fritz Waerndorfer, was a productive association in Vienna, Austria that b ...

in Austria. The Swedish Society of Crafts and Design was reorganized in 1915. The educational practices related to arts and crafts were redesigned in line with modernizing Swedish textile industries. In 1927, she started Sweden’s first modern interior design firm ''Elsa Gullberg Textil og Inredningar AB'', which focused on tradition-based styles. At the World’s Fair in New York, one of her famous designs, ''Lilies'', was exhibited in 1939. She died on 1 March 1984 in

Vaxholm Vaxholm is a locality and the seat of Vaxholm Municipality, Stockholm County, Sweden. It is located on the island of in the Stockholm archipelago. The name Vaxholm comes from Vaxholm Castle, which was constructed in 1549 on an islet with this nam ...

, in Stockholm County, Sweden.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gullberg, Elsa 1886 births 1984 deaths Swedish architects Swedish textile artists Swedish textile designers 20th-century Swedish women artists 20th-century Swedish artists