Troeds of Sweden 1965 brochure and what it tells us
Troeds was founded in Sweden in 1934 by Svea and Hugo Troedsson . Their mid-century furniture was very popular in Great Britain in the 1960s particularly their teak dining room furniture . Other Swedish companies such as Ulferts also sold in the UK at the time but on a much smaller scale than Troeds . Troeds at the time used the talented Swedish designer Nils Jonsson whose name is often stamped on their pieces along with the model name and Troeds . He wasn’t their only designer as they used Yngve Ekstrom sometimes , but most of the pieces we see here are by Jonsson . Prior to working for Troeds he had designed for at least one Danish company , and we’ve had a fantastic bureau by him in the past .
We recently managed to add a 1965 Troeds leaflet to our collection of mainly British brochures and catalogues . It’s very basic with a dining suite photographed in black and white on the front cover and a list of British stockists on the back . Inside are basic details such as model names , sizes , and prices and wood finishes available . Compared to the brightly coloured G Plan catalogues of the time it is very basic . In London you could only buy their furniture at Harrods or Liberty and Co . Apart from in Birmingham where they were available at Rackhams and Lee Longlands you could only find them at local up-market mainly small retailers like Chapmans in Newcastle .
Although they did make bookcases , desks , chests of drawers and other pieces it is only their dining furniture that comes up regularly for sale . We virtually only see their pieces in teak , but other veneers such as rosewood , walnut , wenge and oak were sometimes available on . Rosewood when available was the most expensive and added 30% to 40% to the price which at the time made a vast difference hence it’s rarely seen today . Wenge was a little less expensive , and the prices for oak and teak were identical .
We often get asked if pieces are solid teak , and you’ll see a lot of pieces described on Ebay by private sellers wrongly described as solid teak ! Very little mid-century furniture was solid teak . To get the best grains it was rarely viable to use solid teak , but interestingly one Troeds sideboard is described as solid teak and that is a model called Oden . It’s difficult to compare prices with Troeds as all their models were different sizes , but the Oden was nearly 50% more expensive than the nearest model of similar size that they made . The Oden has lovely sliding doors and not surprisingly with such a price difference is not seen very often . It’s an unusual size at about 174cms , but then Troeds had probably the largest range of sideboard sizes around at the time , the smallest being about 126cms and the largest about 253cms . The Grand being the largest was still cheaper back in the day than the Oden and yet it was 50% larger !
Troeds prices for their teak dining furniture seem to be around 10% more than the equivalent British models of the time by makers such as McIntosh , so will have been cheaper than their Danish counterparts . However their dining tables and chairs are rather boring and with so many nicer 1960s designs out there they have to be really good value today .
Some of their sideboards are really smart , but can be let down by mostly having square legs which aren’t as elegant as turned circular legs as found on G Plan and McIntosh ones . The big plus is the variation in sizes of the sideboards they made in the 1960s . The quality of finish both external and internal is excellent .