Heaven and Earth: The bittersweet inspiration behind this year's Svenskt Tenn Design Scholarship laureate

Founded in 1924 by Estrid Ericson and later shaped by Josef Frank, Svenskt Tenn has long stood as a symbol of Scandinavian design excellence. With its flagship store, interior design studio and café in Stockholm, the house continues to define Swedish craftsmanship and aesthetic sensibility. This year, as it marks its centenary, Phaidon commemorates the legacy with Svenskt Tenn: Interiors – a richly detailed volume soon to be released in Swedish.

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Since 2014, Svenskt Tenn has also turned its gaze forward through an annual design scholarship, awarded to a graduating student from Beckmans College of Design. The scholarship celebrates imagination and craft, bridging the poetic and the practical to nurture the next generation of Swedish designers.

As Thommy Bindefeld, Senior Advisor at Svenskt Tenn, explains, “Being a 101-year-old company with such a rich legacy, we can work as a platform for young designers to showcase their work in an established context. It’s important for us to find new contemporary design that can meet – and converse – with the classic and historical.”

The scholarship was founded by Bindefeld alongside Beckmans’ then-head teacher Jan Loften, principal Cilla Robach and Svenskt Tenn CEO Maria Veerasamy. “In 2014, there were no scholarships for design students – only fashion and visual communication,” says Bindefeld. “It felt essential to support a graduating student through this scholarship.” A decade on, it remains guided by Svenskt Tenn’s core values: longevity, quality, and good design.

This year’s recipient, Love Persson, embodies those values through his deeply personal graduation project Himmel och Jord (Heaven and Earth). Comprising sculptural tables and chairs, the collection explores life’s opposing forces: stability and unrest, softness and hardness, the personal and the professional.

Persson’s inspiration traces back to his mother’s battle with cancer, which she lost just hours before he was to begin his studies at Beckmans. “A few weeks before she passed, I started looking through her old work,” he recalls. “It was a desperate reaction to the realisation that everything I wanted to ask her was now too late. I found her degree project from Konstfack – a study of space, light, and contrasts. Her style was so close to my own. It was as if I saw a part of myself in her work. That’s when I knew my own degree project had to be an interpretation of hers – a collaboration between heaven and earth.”

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From that emotional starting point, Heaven and Earth became as much an act of healing as of design. “It was my way back to my mother, but also to my own expression,” Persson says. “By letting opposites guide form, material and function, I’ve created furniture that balances story and usability. I want to explore form as a language, where the personal strengthens the professional.”

Each piece in the collection carries its own quiet narrative. Tables crowned with heavy stone tops evoke the gravity of mourning – visually unsteady yet quietly monumental. Identical chairs, sculpted in contrasting materials of warm wood and cool metal, meditate on how substance shapes feeling. “Opposites are interesting,” Persson notes. “Two completely different things can enhance each other. The dualism between function and story transforms the space it inhabits – both playful and serious.”

Material selection was central to Persson’s process. Wood, familiar and intuitive, anchors the collection. Stone connects him to his mother’s artistic language. “I build as much as possible myself,” he says, “to strengthen the personal connection in the project.”

The project’s centrepiece – a table with a stone seemingly suspended between base and top – draws from a passage in his mother’s thesis describing Japanese teahouses, where wooden structures are shaped around immovable stones. “I was inspired by the idea of letting the definite remain and working around it,” Persson explains. “Flipping that, I placed the stone at the top and the wood below – promoting a sense of unease, as if the table might topple over. That’s a feeling I connect to after my mother’s passing.”

Sourcing the stone from a rocky beach near a friend’s summer house, Persson initially planned to split it in two. But expert advice led him to preserve it whole. Instead, he cut a hole in the tabletop to thread it over the stone, anchoring it with steel rods for stability. “In the end,” he says, “it felt far more fitting for the meaning of my project. If I’m the wood and the stone is the sadness, then it’s not about breaking it apart. It’s about shaping myself around it.”

For the chairs, Persson paired the warmth of wood with the industrial coldness of galvanised metal. This interplay partly secured his selection by the jury, which included Svenskt Tenn’s CEO, Director of Marketing & Brand Communications, and Senior Advisor. Their motivation praised how “mixing unexpected materials and shapes in a courageous way” echoes the philosophy of Josef Frank and Estrid Ericson — “combining courage, aesthetic height, and a personal story.”

Like most Swedes, Persson says, Svenskt Tenn has always been part of his visual landscape. “It’s almost as present as IKEA – whether through a dish towel, a vase, or a piece of Josef Frank furniture,” he notes. “During my studies, Svenskt Tenn made me realise how crucial storytelling and brand identity are for design to feel meaningful – and successful.”

Alongside the exhibition at Strandvägen 5 (running until 12 October), the scholarship also includes a monetary award and a two-week residency at The Swedish Institute in Paris, in a Svenskt Tenn-furnished apartment. Bindefeld hopes this combination will “offer recognition, inspiration and valuable connections.”

Persson, meanwhile, sees the residency as a chance to “be like a sponge – to absorb every impression.” Together with his partner, he plans to visit Le Corbusier’s houses and “observe how Parisians live – how they interact with interiors in restaurants, bars, and everyday spaces. I also want time to reflect on the project that gave me this opportunity.”

Receiving the Svenskt Tenn scholarship has been both grounding and galvanising. “As a creative, it’s not always easy to step back and reflect on what you’ve achieved,” Persson says. “This scholarship is an affirmation – a recognition that my work holds quality and meaning. The exposure Svenskt Tenn provides is an incredible start to my professional journey.”

In the spirit of Svenskt Tenn’s century-long dialogue between heritage and innovation, Persson’s Heaven and Earth stands as a fitting continuation – a testament to the balance between craftsmanship and emotion, the poetic and the practical, heaven and earth.