Front | Cut Edge

Engblad & Co’s new Front collection consists of nine wallpapers with sketched patterns and shadows against a white surface to create an illusion of depth and structure. The collection is the work of some of Sweden’s best and most celebrated designers – the Front design group.

“We have long been interested in and worked with magical and trompe l’oeil effects,” says Charlotte von der Lancken from Front. “You could say that we have long been inspired by perception.”

Trompe l’oeil is French and roughly means “to trick the eye”. Several of the designs in Engblad & Co’s Front collection offer a touch of deception or give fantasy a helping hand. The “Drapery” pattern, for example, looks like a billowing drape, making us curious to draw it aside and discover if something is hiding behind.

Front has changed our outlook on design. Thanks to them, animals have taken their place in the upper echelons of design. The breakthrough for the trio – Charlotte von der Lancken, Sofia Lagerkvist and Anna Lindgren – came ten years ago when their horse lamp (a plastic horse with a lampshade on its head) and pig table shook the foundations of the design world. Front has also shown that it was possible to modernise the highly traditional ‘Höganäskruset’ to produce a set of versatile tableware suited to modern homes. The design group has completed a multitude of projects, everything from showers and rugs to glass, and has been awarded the design world’s top prize – the Torsten & Wanja Söderberg Award – but they have never worked with paper. Until now. With the Front collection for Engblad & Co, the group have tackled this material with their customary enthusiasm and exactitude. Wallpaper is familiar to all of us, but is no less challenging a material to work with, not even for some of our most pioneering modern designers.

“The designs in the collection originate from the production technique for wallpaper,” says Charlotte, and explains how the process of developing the collection’s nine designs began with the group taking scissors to several rolls of wallpaper.

Front cut, wove and folded paper into shapes that were then sketched. They tried out variations, sought and found shapes that are both discreet enough to remain in the background as wallpaper should, yet at the same time stand out with a hint of three-dimensionality.

“Our vision has been to give white walls structure using shadows and sketched patterns. Today, patterns are okay and more furnishings styles can also exist at the same time,” states Anna from Front.
The fact that this is the case can, of course, partially be credited to design pioneers Front themselves, but it is also pleasing for everyone that Engblad & Co’s new collection offers nine unique options to use patterns to change the character of the walls in your home.