Birger Ekman

Mjölby Intarsia was established in 1909 as Mjölby Découperfabrik and adopted its definitive name in 1917. By the interwar period it had become one of Sweden's foremost producers of objects decorated with inlaid wood veneers, a technique rooted in Renaissance cabinetmaking that the firm brought into a distinctly modern idiom. Ekman became the company's most visible designer and his work spans the two dominant decorative currents of the 1920s and 1930s in Sweden: Swedish Grace, with its restrained classical forms and preference for native timbers, and the slightly later Art Deco phase, in which geometry and exotic motifs grew more emphatic.

The objects he designed for Mjölby - ceiling pendants and flush-mount lamps, wall mirrors, trays, cabinets, and decorative plaques - share a characteristic visual language: marquetry friezes drawn from mythological sources, floral ornament, fauna, and occasionally narrative scenes such as the Tales of Arabian Nights. The pieces combine several species of wood veneer to produce tonal gradations without paint, a technically demanding approach that required careful draughtsmanship at the design stage. Original working drawings by Ekman survive and have themselves appeared at auction, as have Mjölby Intarsia trade catalogues containing his signed sheets.

Beyond his applied work, Ekman maintained a separate practice as a draughtsman. Charcoal figure studies - croquis and life drawings - appear in the auction record alongside his decorative output, and a watercolour painting has been noted in the database. The gap between these two bodies of work is not unusual for a Swedish artist of his generation: the boundaries between fine art training, craft design, and commercial illustration were considerably more permeable in the interwar period than they later became. His figurative drawings show the influence of his academic art training, with close observation of the human form.

At Nordic auctions Ekman's name surfaces in two distinct market segments. His intarsia pieces for Mjölby attract collectors of Swedish design and decorative arts, while his drawings appear in smaller sales focused on works on paper. On Auctionist, 37 works are catalogued, with Connoisseur Bokauktioner (11 lots), RA Auktionsverket Norrköping (5 lots), and Bukowskis Stockholm (4 lots) leading the activity. The top result is an Art Deco bar cabinet with intarsia that sold for 18,726 SEK. A ceiling lamp attributed to Ekman achieved 13,000 EUR, and a Swedish Grace chest of drawers in the classic Mjölby idiom sold for 6,555 SEK - figures that reflect steady collector interest in the Swedish Grace and Art Deco design tradition.