Off-the-wall ideas from Sweden.(DESIGNER PROFILE)

The Stockholm Furniture Fair has always been a celebration of Nordic talent and this year, a young firm from Sweden caught the eye. An all-female team called Front, it is bringing some refreshing effrontery to the sometimes-staid realm of Scandinavian design.

'We try to do things that aren't typical,' says Charlotte von der Lancken who, like her accomplices Sofia Lagerkvist, Anna Lindgren and Katja Savstrom is a graduate of Konstfack college of arts, crafts and design in Stockholm.

Their work so far includes household objects created with the help of members of the animal kingdom, such as coat hooks with a shape created by the muscular contractions of a python. 'We met a snake collector who let us choose which one we wanted to work with,' says von der Lancken, 'but unfortunately it was a bit angry.'

The range also includes the insect table, with a graphic made by scuttling beetles, and the Rat wallpaper, with a pattern formed by the bite-marks of ravenous rodents.

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Von der Lancken explains: 'We put wallpaper in their cage ...