Märta Måås-Fjetterström
1873-1941

It was here in Skåne that Märta Måås-Fjetterström settled after growing up in Kimstad, a small place in the province of Östergötland, where her father was the vicar and where she was born in 1873. She came initially to the Historical Museum in the ancient university city of Lund and, in due course, became manager of the local handicrafts association for the county of Malmö. After that she joined Lilli Zickerman in managing the weaving school, run by the Swedish Handicrafts Association in Vittsjö. Her tapestry entitled "Staffan Stalledräng" [Staffan the Stable Lad] was widely admired when it was shown at the Stockholm Exhibition of 1909.

Märta Måås-Fjetterström started her own textile studio in Båstad in 1919. She drew designs for rugs and curtains which were woven by women in the district. Originally she worked in a romantic and nationalistic tradition, with elements of art nouveau design, in a style that was typical of the time. But her contacts with folk art in Skåne and her study of Oriental rugs helped her to develop a style of her own that was unique in the world. In 1934, when she had passed her sixtieth year, she made her definitive breakthrough among Sweden’s art critics with a major exhibition at the Liljevalch art gallery [Liljevalchs konsthall] in Stockholm.

Today, Märta Måås-Fjetterström’s works are to be found in the world’s leading museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Louvre in Paris and the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm. Her designs are based on native Swedish and Oriental textile traditions combined with a skilled eye for natural forms. Like the great Swedish botanist Linnaeus she studied flowers and leaves in detail, while the occasional horse or sheep also finds its way into her designs, giving a special rhythm to the patterns.

"Flowers like the eight-leaved stitchwort, the octagon and the rose recur in the textile art of all countries and periods. However much we worry and work at the matter, we textile designers hardly get past this handful of usable geometric forms that have been repeated thousands of times in textiles"; Märta Måås-Fjetterström wrote in 1929.

When she died in 1941, she left 700 designs to posterity complete with full instructions for making them. They now form an invaluable heritage for the studio to preserve and to reinterpret in new products.

"She is a remarkable storyteller, this hard-working weaver who finds her inspiration in legends and in meadows, from the Orient and from Scandinavia, from ancient faiths and from the freshest leaves, from Biblical quotations and from buildings, from all that causes the imagination to bloom"; the words of Erik Wettergren in 1934. He became director of the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm.

"Bruna Heden", rölakan [flat weave]
designed by Märta Måås-Fjetterström in 1931.