The Home Office When the country was instructed to work from home if possible, there were some happy […]
Category: Featured – Swedish Resources
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In the nine years since they founded D. Larsson Interior and Antikhandel, Daniel and Cristina Larsson have become […]
19th Century Swedish Birch Neo Classical Sofa US $5,540.37 On Ebay Early 19th Century Painted Gustavian Sofa -US […]
White Lacquer Finish Round Accent Table $321 From Overstock On Ebay 17th and 18th century furniture is still […]
Of all the European country home styles, none is more universally popular than Scandinavian Country. These fresh, light-filled northern interiors have an effortless grace that never fails to delight the eye.
JoAnn Barwick and the editors of House Beautiful lead us on a tour of more than twenty exceptional residences in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland that show this immensely appealing look at its very best.
These interiors are both steeped in tradition and utterly contemporary. Scandinavians have a passion for color and an abiding reverence for nature: stippled, spattered and even faux-marble painted finishes enliven even the most humble country furniture; and an abundance of rich woods, crisp tiles and robust textiles embody the pleasures of natural materials.
With nearly 300 full-color photographs and an extensive directory of sources for Scandinavian furnishings and accessories, this engrossing and seductive book encapsulates this most inviting of country styles.
JoAnn Barwick was editor-in-chief of House Beautiful magazine for more than a decade, and is acknowledged as a pioneer in the development of American and international country style. She was the founding editor of Country Living magazine and has been an editor at Good Housekeeping and Modern Bride.
Norma Skurka is the former Home editor of the Sunday New York Times Magazine. She has taught at Parsons School of Design, lectured at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, and is the author of several books, including The New York Times Book of Interior Design and Decoration.
Scandinavian Country by , JoAnn Barwick On AMAZON
Scandinavian Country by , JoAnn Barwick On Ebay
Picture Credit Scandinavian Antiques Co On Ebay 1800s White Folk Art decorated Antique Swedish Mora Clock From Swedish […]
Scandinavia – made up of Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Iceland and Norway -has always had a unique mark on the arts through history. Whether it be needlepoint, embroidery, wood carving, furniture painting, knitting or any other local arts, they inspired each other in these regions, often drawing on the same color tones, motifs, and decorations.
The Nordic style craftsmanship and decorative themes can be seen unique to this northern area of Europe. Chances are if you love Scandinavian furniture, you will fall in love with so many of the different arts that are also found in this region.
Folk art, is celebrated in the international galleries around the world, but it also can be found in people’s homes, garages, and attics around Scandinavia. With access to to the internet, you don’t even have to know the back streets of Sweden, or speak the language to invest in high quality antique folk art. With esty and ebay within reach, you can pull together a collection for your interior without leaving your home.
“Folk art” is the most common term to describe the every day craftsmanship of people from one region or another, which depicted the artistic talent of life and times in art. Almost everyone has a hobby today, and it was more so, 100 to 300 years ago, when the family didn’t gather around the television for three hours each night. People had so much more time that could be devoted to the arts when the children were home schooled, and mom and dad worked off the land. Life was so much better back then, and you could have a little piece of that history.
The art was influenced by the culture, which is why German, Italian, and even American folk art each has their own style and flavor. Many of the popular collectible folk art pieces include handcrafted toys, quilting, wood carvings, and basket weaving. Folk oil paintings can be some of the most expensive range of collectibles within Folk art. Oil paintings emerged in the late 1700’s but only until the 1800’s did it really begin to flourish. Folk artists were often self-taught, and considered amateur artists due to the fact that they were not academically trained in the fine arts. These paintings are some of the most collectible of the wall art, and surprise, surprise,….sometimes they are inexpensive! It is amazing what you can find on ebay, if you are willing to wait.
Here is a collection of 60 books that focus their attention on Folk art, or the Scandinavian region in general.
Country Style Mora Clocks – Swedish Interior Design.co.uk Interior archive is one of those sites where you can […]
Picture Credit –Scandinavian Antiques Co On Ebay
Featured above are the colors, Top Row: Pratt & Lambert’s Argent 1322, Farrow & Ball’s Claydon Blue 87, Farrow & Ball’s Green Blue 84, Middle Row, Farrow & Ball’s Light Blue 22, Benjamin Moore’s Sea Star 2123-30, Benjamin Moore’s Wolf Gray 2127-40 Bottom Row, Benjamin Moore’s Graytint 1611, Sherwin-Williams’s Magnetic Gray SW-7058, Benjamin Moore’s Stone Harbor 2111-50
Home Beautiful featured an article on 26 Designers who shared their favorite Grays. Gray painted interiors can be the perfect color palette for Swedish Gustavian or Rococo antique furniture. Gray can showcase antiques like no other color, because it is neutral, and doesn’t compete with the furniture and decor. The last thing you want after spending thousands on a piece of furniture, is to have someone notice anything but what you spent your hard earned money on! Pair your painted gray antiques with a backdrop of white gray interior walls and trim, and add a punch of color with your upholstery, accessories, and flowers.
Many of the designers featured in the article, were those of Richard Gluckman, Stephanie Stokes, David Kleinberg, Tori Golub, Stephen Sills, Phoebe Howard, Steven Gambrel, Gerrie Bremermann, and Sharone Einhorn and Honey Walters.
Here are just a few of the designer quotes:
“Mesquite is a flattering light moss green without much yellow. I love it because it doesn’t shout ‘I’m green!’ It says, ‘I’m a very beautiful color.'” –Jennifer Garrigues, Benjamin Moore’s Mesquite 501
“Lago Argentino is a glacier lake in Patagonia, and it’s the most amazing color, an aqua, milky because as the ice melts it pulls minerals off the mountain. I stayed in an inn with a stunning view of the Perito Moreno glacier.” –Suzanne Rheinstein , Ralph Lauren Paint’s Blue-Green GH81
“For me, the most appealing colors in summer are not hot but cool. You don’t need to be reminded of the sun and heat — you’re in it. What you want is a cool breeze through the pine trees, like this chalky gray green.” –Frank Roop, Benjamin Moores Soft Fern 2144-40
“In my cutting garden I have morning glories climbing over a lattice obelisk painted this wonderful silvery sage green. It reminds me of lavender leaves.” –Michael Whaley, Benjamin Moores Cedar Grove 444
“I have a big, hugely functional Georgian Revival lawyer’s desk in tired dry mahogany, bought from a tired dry lawyer. I painted it this pale gray-green in an oil-base stain finish, cleanable, very calm, but not so pale that it dies. The gimmick is the old-fashioned desk in an unexpected color. It catches light and makes for a more interesting surface.” –Carey Maloney, Donald Kaufman Color Collections DKC-10
“It’s kind of robin’s egg blue, and with mahogany furniture and neutral upholstery, it looks great. I see dining rooms as mostly evening rooms, and this has life to it. It’s very soothing.” –Mariette Himes Gomez, Benjamin Moore’s Sage Tint 458
“Green is the great neutral, all the way from pond scum to soft sage or pale celery. I recently moved into a new house surrounded by greenery, and when I was thinking of what color I might use for a drapery lining, it came to me to reflect the green that is present year-round right outside that window.” –Barbara Barry – Donald Kaufman Color Collection’s DKC-8
“This is the color of the sky in Old Master paintings, when the varnish has yellowed; it’s luminous. Paint just the floor and you’d feel as if you were floating.” –Thomas Jayne, Benjamin Moore’s Heavenly Blue
“In my cutting garden I have morning glories climbing over a lattice obelisk painted this wonderful silvery sage green. It reminds me of lavender leaves.” –Michael Whaley, Benjamin Moore’s Cedar Grove 444
Gray Painted Swedish Furniture – Laserow Antiques
18th Century Swedish Tray Table – Jacqueline Adams Antiques
This mirror would have been part of a room paneling. It features a beautifully hand carved and gilded top panel of a basket with flowers and grape bunches before crossed mallets and grape branches and is surrounded with a square, gilt molded frame. Beneath is a square mirror framed with a beaded, molded edge
Veranda May June 2012 When you think of slipcovers, you may have memories of the 80’s clunky furniture […]
Pine Plywood | Design Build Love
I stumbled across a DIY trend out there where people are cutting their own “planks” out of plywood. It seems rather unusual at first, but the results really surprised me. You get the look of real wood flooring which you can sand, paint, stain, varnish, or white wash, for fractions of the cost.
“We tore up nasty old carpet, then cut grooves in the plywood that was under the carpet to replicate plank flooring with a skill saw – and used a dremel to get closer to the walls. This worked better than the router which was recommended in the web article I got this idea from. We stained and then did three coats of poly. Everyone’s amazed that this isn’t ‘real’ plank flooring! We varied the width of the planks, using a 2×4 as a guide.”
There are a couple of links I want to share that might move you in the direction of considering this look.
1. Layers Of Learning Blog Flooring Transformation
Layers Of Learning Blog posted absolutely stunning photos of a room that they used plywood cut into 6″ strips of wood.
They mention in their article that plywood floors allowed them to transform their WHOLE house because of the low cost of the materials. This certainly a reason to consider this option. Many people can only afford a couple rooms with the other options. Plywood is so inexpensive, that you can do it yourself, and it is affordable.
Plywood gives you the option to cut wide planks with real grain. For those of you who want the REAL thing, this would be an affordable way of getting the look for less.
Buying plywood allows you to do one room at a time. It doesn’t matter if your project takes you a couple months to a year to complete, because plywood is practically the same from store to store. The finishing process allows you to dent, distress, and apply paint or stain which unifies the space.
Another plus to plywood floors is if something is spilled on the floors, which ruins several boards, all they would have to do is rip up the damaged boards, and replace them with the same finishing paint, stain or varnish!
PLY Wood Floors By Layers Of Learning Blog
Here are some of their costs:
Living room – 20′x13′ which equals 260 square feet.
$13.97 each on 9 sheets of 11/32″ “CD” grade plywood = $125.73, See the rest of the break down on their blog Layers Of Learning Blog
Here are some of their tips to consider.
Don’t Buy the Premium Brand Of Plywood
“There are different grades of plywood. “A” grade is the nicest, it comes with one very clean and sanded side. This is not what we went with because, as the guy at Lowe’s said, we can sand it ourselves and save big $$$. A sheet of “A” grade plywood costs about $28 in our market, but a sheet of “C” grade plywood is only about $14.”
Let The Wood Adjust To The Temperature Of The Room
” After the plywood is cut, stack it in the room where you’ll be laying it for a couple of days.”
2. Quarry Orchard Blog
Quarry Orchard Blog also put together a beautiful floor made from Plywood. In their “Plywood To Plank Flooring Tutorial“
They decided to tackle a redoing the room above their garage with a square footage of approximately 533. They decided to go with 6 inch strips that were all 8 feet long. They were shocked that it only took them an hour and 45 minutes to cut the sheets into the planks.
A Couple Tips From The Quarry Orchard Blog
– They started with the first board and squared it with the wall, leaving a 1/16 inch gap between the first board and the wall.
– Be sure to use a nail punch to make sure that the nails at least flush with the flooring.
– Clean up the look by being sure the nails are all in line and evenly spaced. Have a helper that can measure and mark the wood. They measured every 16 inches for each nail. Consider making a jig to help with the measuring and marking for where the nails are to go. This will enable you to line up the previous board and mark rather than measure for every single nail.
Check out the final pictures of this room! What a transformation!
A Break Down Of Their Material Costs:
16 sheets of 15/32 pine plywood @ $16.49 per sheet
9 gigantic tubes of Liquid Nail @ $4.75 each
10 lbs of cut nails (ordered from Tremont Nail Company) @ $69.63 (includes s&h)
4 gallons of Varathane polyurethane @ $37.46 per gallon
2 quarts of stain @ $9.99 each
3. Tidbits From The Tremaynes Blog
For their stunning transformation they used 4×8 sheets of plywood; cut into 8 inch strips, and laid it like a regular hardwood floor. They used an old nailgun, some pennies to space out the wood, for the old farmhouse-style look. The cost was $60. Fabulous!!
About to open a shop in Newport, RI, store owner Jordan decided to tackle the outdated carpet flooring that came with the shop. Being that the shop was a historic home built in the early 1700′s, she wanted something more period appropriate.
She decided to go with the standard 1/2″ thick 4′ x 8′ sheets at a cost of just under $20 each. In order to have zero waste, she chose to have the boards cut into 8 inch by 8 foot lengths, giving her six planks per sheet of plywood.
When she got back to the shop, she laid them out, and sanded all rough edges and splinters, and decided to white wash them before nailing them down. She mixed up 1/4 CeCe Caldwells Simply White Chalk Paint and 3/4 water. She then used a roller attached to a broom handle to apply a coat of the white washed paint to all of the planks.
After all the planks were dry, her fiance Brett, started working on nailing the planks to the flooring. They used Bostik flooring adhesive to the backs of the plywood planks, which were then laid into place and nailed into the floor. Brett used 1 1/2″ nails and shot them in on an angle. The nails were spaced out about every 12″, placing two all along either side of each plank. Brett used a metal straight edge for a spacing guide, which gave the perfect distance between planks. As Brett went on nailing down the boards, he used a table saw to cut some of them into different lengths so that the boards would have more of a staggered look.
Gustav I of Sweden, born under the name Gustav Vasa (12 May 1496– 29 September 1560), was known […]
Picture Credit Habitania Work Rooms As we discussed in Part 2, Accent furniture, such as Gustavian chairs, smaller tables, drop leaf […]
Find Cartel Clocks On Ebay- See it here A Continental Gilt Wood Cartelle Clock, C. L. Malmsjo […]
Set Of Anna Griffin Lot Of Stamps – Original Listing Here I never considered picking up stamps until […]
Picture – Restoration Hardware French Pillows From Overstock On Ebay Grainsack pillows have gained tremendous popularity in the […]