Färg & Blanche

Portrait of Fredrik Färg and Emma Blanche.
Photo Lennart Durehed

Stockholm based design studio FÄRG & BLANCHE was founded in 2010 by the Swedish designer Fredrik Färg and designer Emma Marga Blanche, born in France. As a studio, they work across a wide variety of fields, collaborating with established furniture brands such as BD Barcelona Design, Bernhardt Design, Gärsnäs, Johanson Design, Rörstrand, and Petite Friture to name a few, as well as producing their own collections and limited art pieces for galleries and public art sculpture.
Färg & Blanche have designed one of the residences Hem x 6 at the Swedish Institute with the producer Gärsnäs. They are also the designers of several furniture and objects in the exhibition.

What’s your story?

We are based in Stockholm but there is something special with our link to both Sweden and France that we would like to develop further. For example, we have collaborated with the company Petite Friture in France and we were invited to exhibit as designers at Maison&Objet. As a collaborative design duo, we are in a constant critical dialogue working together. Coming from two different cultures often raises questions and brings new perspectives to our design process, which might lead to unexpected results.

The Scenography

For the showroom, we created a three-dimensional sketch of the room and objects. The white felt fabric serves as a blank canvas, and the yellow stitches represent strokes made by a pen. Together, they create a vivid backdrop for the exhibits. In dialogue with the participants, we set out each exhibitors their own space. At the same time, we formed a unifying color scheme overall. It represent the magical properties of the sunlight of the Swedish skies and the yellow tones of the facades lining the streets of Stockholm. We produced all of the scenography by hand in our studio.

What’s your secret?

We always try to put forward the craftmanship and leave the trace of the hand visible in large and small scale designs. We are always curious, trying new expressions and methods, which often takes time. We frequently work with textiles, and sewing is an important part of our process. Fredrik dreamt of becoming a tailor, and takes any opportunity to experiment with developing new applications and techniques with existing technologies and machines, while Emma believes that everything is possible. As a French-Swedish child growing up in France, she frequently visited the institut suédois, which for her was the closest she would come to her dream of living in Sweden- until she moved to Stockholm permanently in 2007.

 

Färg & Blanche