The Story of Anna Petrus’s Hunting Tray (Jaktbrickan)

On a March evening in 1920, disaster struck at the Tennispaviljongen in Östermalm. A fire broke out, and Anna Petrus and her family barely escaped with their lives. Her entire body of work, sculptures and prints prepared for a much-anticipated exhibition, was reduced to ashes. For a young artist who had debuted only a few years earlier, the loss was devastating. Yet from this tragedy came a turning point. Forced to begin anew, Petrus redirected her creative energy toward the applied arts, seeking inspiration abroad.

Travelling through Italy, France, and especially North Africa, she encountered metalwork and small tables that blended utility with decorative surfaces. Returning to Stockholm, she established a new studio on Riddargatan. Here, she began experimenting with copper, brass, and pewter — materials that were unconventional in Swedish modern design at the time. With techniques such as chasing and punching, she transformed these metals into detailed surfaces filled with mythological figures, animals, and garden scenes.

Among these creations was Jaktbrickan — The Hunting Tray. Made in the early 1920s, the work features a removable, tin-plated copper tray, decorated with a vivid hunting scene of figures and hounds captured mid-motion. The tray rests on a sculptural, blackened wooden base, designed in collaboration with architect Uno Åhrén. Each tray bore its own character; the detailing was so meticulous that every example was closer to an artwork than a piece of furniture.

Petrus’s tray tables were met with immediate acclaim. In 1922 they appeared at the “Bygge och Bo” exhibition at Liljevalchs, followed by the Gothenburg Jubilee Exhibition in 1923, and finally the 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs. Critics praised them as both practical and artistic, marking Petrus as a pioneer of 1920s Swedish metal and pewter design.

Very few early tray tables survive today, and each is considered a unique object. The Hunting Tray is among the most celebrated, not only for its intricate surface but also for its personal resonance. This very example was given by Petrus herself as a wedding gift to members of her family, a gesture that underlines the value she placed on these works.

The Hunting Tray captures the essence of Swedish Grace — elegance, clarity of form, and decorative richness — while also telling the story of an artist who turned loss into reinvention. In pewter and copper, Petrus forged a new path for Swedish design, where craftsmanship and artistry were inseparable.