Ericofon, Calling the Future…
Recognised as a twentieth-century ‘design icon', the first one-piece telephone on the market embodied expectations for a brighter future
The ‘futuristic’ form of the Ericofon may conjure imagery of 1960s science fiction or, in the case of the bright orange model, 1970s Pop Art optimism. It seems to proclaim, ‘this is tomorrow’, but the concept was born during the interwar Modernist revolution.
As early as 1930, the Swedish telecommunications company, Ericsson was innovating the design of telephones by introducing new materials and pursuing more ergonomic, user-friendly, configurations. Their 1931 range of Bakelite telephones was designed by a team led by Johan Christian Bjerknes with aesthetic input from Jean Heiberg, a Norwegian figurative painter.
Instead of the ‘candlestick’ set-up with its separate earpiece, the new Ericsson model integrated microphone and speaker in one handset cradled on the dial-bearing base unit. It had an elegant form that would fit harmoniously in the fashionable Art Deco interiors of the day. More importantly, their use of Bakelite enabled a new manufacturing process to speed-up production to meet the rapid growth in demand. The casings could be hot-moulded in one piece using the plastic compound and ‘dropped’ onto the…
