What kind of art do you choose for a cottage with traditional Scandinavian decor, replete with stained or painted light-wood floors, furniture usually painted in blue and yellow, and furniture with almost severe clean lines? We’ll show you what one woman chose to enhance her décor, but more importantly, the artworks that “spoke to her heart.” The cornerstone of our seminars is to create “an outside of you” that matches her “inside of her.”
Norma is a successful executive who has lived in the same row house since earning her MBA and landing her first high-paying job. There was certainly nothing “wrong” with the house. It just wasn’t Norma. Expensive leather furniture, lots of taupe, chrome, and glass simply served as a comfortable place to “hang your hat.” When Norma confessed that she would really love to live in a cabin, everyone in the group immediately thought of Laura Ashley. We were wrong! There are cabins and there are cabins.
Norma is Scandinavian and her heritage is very important to her. Some of her best memories are from her grandparents’ country house.
When Norma called me to say that she had finally found her cabin, I was expecting the white picket fence, the front porch, and maybe even a thatched roof. She gave me the address; At first I thought she had the wrong place for me. There didn’t seem to be a house on the lot, just thick foliage and beautiful thick-trunked trees. I walked down a stone path, and suddenly there was the house. It was so embedded in the landscape that it seemed to be part of it. Norma had found a lovely house. When you entered the house you were in a small antechamber similar to the small antechambers of northern farmhouses where people leave their heavy jackets and muddy or snowy boots. Norma remodeled hers and turned it into a lobby. A few more steps and there was a huge kitchen. The ceiling was high and wooden cabinets rose from the waist to the ceiling, complete with glass paneled doors. Norma had stripped the linoleum and stripped the hardwood floors. Instead of staining the wood a dark wood tone, she used a transparent stain, following the Scandinavian tradition of light woods.
The large living room also featured light-stained floors. Norma, in budgeting, had chosen to pay top dollar for some authentic Swedish furniture and cut corners by buying some equally Swedish from IKEA. While much of the Scandinavian furniture is stark and straight-lined, Norma opted for an overstuffed Swedish Stromsholm sofa in a blue and white print. Two armchairs, a Fanny Chair in blue and a Rosendal armchair in bright yellow, were also expensive imports. The coffee table was a large piece of unfinished wood, which she had sanded and stained and then placed on ornate legs from an antique auction table.
For the living room, Norma chose Gustav Klimt’s Baby and Vincent Van Gogh’s Bank of the Oise at Auvers.
The large dining room served as a dining room for all meals. Norma, a large, airy room facing east, is furnished with a heavy oak dining table that she bought at auction and painted white. The blue side chairs were expensive in natural wood from Gripsholm. A large sideboard was the only other piece of furniture.
For this dining room, he chose an oil reproduction of Paul Cézanne’s Apples and Cookies, as well as Cézanne’s Chrysanthemums.
For her bedroom she chose a white bed from Chrislinelund. For all other pieces, he shopped at flea markets and garage sales and also painted all of his finds white. Because wallpaper is often used in Scandinavian decor, she used wallpaper throughout the house, including light blue and white patterned Swedish wallpaper in this room. Don’t think that because you have wallpaper on your walls you can’t hang pictures. They can be right at home hanging on painted or wooden walls.
One of Norma’s favorite rooms was a sunroom on the opposite side of the house overlooking a garden and thick foliage. The centerpiece was a blue and white Gripsholm patio chair ottoman. She dyed the floors a light blue, another hallmark of Scandinavian decor. This sunny room features 2 oil paintings: Bird-eye View of a Landscape 1502 by Leonardo Da Vinci and A Vase of Flowers by Peter Brueqhel.
The guest room was the most “romantic” in Norma’s house. A large white canopy bed was surrounded by white furniture patterned in blue and yellow. Unlike her expensive bed, she bought a king-size bed from a wholesaler and painted it dark blue. She stamped other bedroom furniture from Ikea. The room was clear and bright. For this room she hung Black Lines and His Harmonie Tranquille by Wassily Kandinsky.
I must say that Norma’s house is one of the most charming I have been to. Along the stairs that led to the second floor bedrooms she had hung family photos, all of which she had transposed into black and white. Hanging family photos offers the owner the opportunity to show what he really values. Displaying those images is also an important part of a home. But, as they say, that’s another story.