A living-room furniture suite designed by Uno Åhrén for the 1923 Gothenburg Exhibition will come to auction for the first time, Bukowskis has announced. Åhrén was just 25 when he furnished the room for the Hall of Decorative Arts at the exhibition that marked the 300th anniversary of Sweden's second city — and the suite has remained in private hands ever since.

The furniture passed from Arthur and Alice Thiel to their daughter Olga Enhörning, descending through the family for more than a century. The suite was made for the Hall of Decorative Arts, the exhibition's showcase for contemporary Swedish craft and design, and it has survived intact as a single group — unusual for furniture built for a temporary fair. Its appearance in Bukowskis' Modern Art & Design sale on 18–19 November is the first time it has been offered on the open market, a century after it was made.

The live sale takes place at Arsenalsgatan 2 in Stockholm, with viewing at Berzelii Park 1 from 12 to 17 November. The same auction carries another rarity: an abstract painting by Hilma af Klint, offered at auction for the first time in three decades.

Åhrén went on to become one of Sweden's defining modernist architects and town planners, and the suite catches him at the very start of that career — a young designer furnishing a showcase interior for a city celebrating its tercentenary. The combination of an early modernist design, a documented exhibition history and a century of single-family ownership is what makes the group so appealing to collectors.