Like the Bauhausler Otti Berger,[16] who for a while was responsible for teaching industrial weaving at the Bauhaus in Dessau, Astrid Sampe was extremely interested in industrial textile techniques and new fibers as cellulose, cellophane, viscose, rayon and fiberglass. Otti Berger had come to Stockholm in April 1929 in order to join a course at the Johanna Brunssons vävskola, the so-called Practical Fabric School, for eleven weeks. The course ended with a vegetable dyeing section with teacher Barbro Nilsson, who later became head teacher of the textile department at Konstfackskolan.

In January 1930, Otti Berger’s own textiles were shown at Galerie Moderne, in Stockholm, alongside an exhibition on “radical,” modernist Swedish residential architecture, similar to the one in Germany. Before the opening of the exhibition, Berger had already left Stockholm again for Dessau. Besides a brief, but positive revue in newspaper Dagens Nyheter,[17] there was an article in Form magazine in 1930.[18] Later, Berger’s interesting and analytical article “Right fibers in right place” was published in the magazine Spektrum, Arkitektur och samhälle.[19] She describes what functions textiles should fulfill in rooms and how structures and colors are affected by materials and light. Knowledge like this was adopted by Astrid Sampe. Through Otti Berger’s stay and her lectures[20] in Stockholm in 1929, László Moly-Nagy’s emphasis on the uniqueness and tactile properties of different materials were transferred to Swedish textile designers. (Interest in hand weaving greatly increased in Sweden in the 1940s.)

For modernists like Astrid Sampe and the students at Konstfackskolan, the textiles were to go well with the new modern functionalist architecture. No small-scale romantic floral patterns would do. In the 1950s and 60s, the adaptation to modern architecture was solved by large-scale, silkscreen-printed modernist patterns.

Konstfack and the Bauhaus