Meet the Designer Nisse Strinning with Olson and Baker

Nils “Nisse” Strinning (1917 – 2006) was a Swedish architect and designer. His simplistic approach and attention to functionality, along with others, has formed the basis for what we now know as ‘Scandinavian design’.
In the 1940’s, Strinning studied architecture at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. It was here that Strinning designed and created a dish rack, consisting of plastic coated metal wires – a design that later inspired, and lead to the development of the famous String Shelving. His dish rack was named Elfa, and received great popularity at the time.
In 1949, Nils Strinning and his wife Kajsa Strinning designed the String bookshelf System for a contest initiated by Bonnier public library. The shelving system has become an iconic design in today’s world, its quintessential Scandinavian design remains extremely popular and looks as contemporary today as it did back almost 70 years ago. Designed as a cheap solution to increasing book collections, or when additional storage was needed – the simple string shelving system has received more than 15 prestigious international awards over the years.
In 1952, Several years after Strinning and his wife designed String Shelving, he founded two companies, String Design AB and Swedish Design AB. Here, Strinning and his wife designed numerous plastic items throughout the 60’s and 70’s.
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