Classic Swedish Interiors

by Sjoberg, Lars; Snitt, Ingalill

• ISBN13: 9780711230880
• ISBN10: 0711230889
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-09-07
• Publisher: Frances Lincoln

Summary

Lars Sjöberg is one of Sweden's national treasures. He is as widely known for his encyclopaedic knowledge of Sweden's historic houses as he is for his passionate concern to preserve them. Presented here are the eight houses (and one church) that he has acquired over forty years, many of which he bought in order to save them from being demolished. They range from a miniature Baroque manor house to an imposing Italianate Neoclassical villa, from a late 17th-century aristocratic mansion to the two-room dwellings of early 19th-century smelting workers. Each house tells a story giving an insight into why it was built and how it changed with succeeding generations. Each has been lovingly photographed by Ingalill Snitt. Text and pictures combine to show how the appealing style that has come to be recognized as quintessentially Swedish developed from its roots in the late 17th century to flower in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Here are the pale wood floors and muslin curtains, the elegant Gustavian furniture, the gleaming gilded mirrors, the charming painted wall decorations and the simple sprigged or striped fabrics, used in entirely authentic interiors.An art historian and a museum curator, Sjoberg is also a superb self-taught craftsman who believes ardently in the value of learning from the past to preserve the future. His principles are borne out by the meticulous way in which he has restored and conserved his houses. His first and most complex undertaking was the manor of Regnaholm. Built in the 1770s, redecorated in the early years of the 19th century and unoccupied for about forty years when he took it on in 1966, it allowed him to experiment with interior decoration and refurnishing. He has built on this knowledge over the decades, reproducing furniture, having fabrics rewoven and reprinted and lighting and even porcelain copied. This book is a ravishingly beautiful, deeply personal summary of everything Lars Sjöberg has learnt in his years of working and living with classic Swedish interiors.

Author Biography

Lars Sjöberg had a 36-year career at the National Museum in Sweden, and for many of those years he was Senior Curator in the Department of the Royal Castles Collections. During that time he worked on the exhibitions Empire Style, Thought and Form in Rococo and The Sun and the Polar Star(Stockholm and Paris). Since 1990 he has been a consultant onreproduction 18th-century furniture for the National Board ofAntiquities and IKEA. He is the author of over fifteen books,including The Swedish Room.Ingalill Snitt specializes in architecture and interior designphotography, and also directs television commercials. Herbooks of photography include Splendore di Sicilia, Swedish – Light,Shape, Architecture, Living in Norway and two with Lars Sjoberg:The Swedish Room and The Swedish House. Her work is regularlyfeatured in magazines including Elle, Marie Claire, Architectural Digest and The World of Interiors.

Excerpts

A PLEA FOR THE PASTI can't remember a time when I was not interested in the past. Even before I could read, I loved to listen to my mother reading aloud to me from Fältskärns berättelser, a history of Finland and Sweden between 1600 and 1792, told as a family saga. For my tenth birthday I was given my grandfather's 19th-century edition of Svecia Antiqua et Hodierna, a magnificent book filled with exquisite copper prints, made from drawings by Erik Dahlberg between 1660 and 1710, of Sweden's palaces and manor houses. The illustrations had me enthralled: I began to dream of having houses like those, and I have been dreaming ever since. At the time, we lived in a house designed and built by my father close to the boarding school where he taught carpentry and metalwork. He felt that there was almost nothing that couldn't be made by one's hands. He even built a caravan in which we travelled all over Europe during the holidays. I inherited this practical outlook, as well as my mother's love of family and Swedish history, and at the end of my schooldays I was torn between going to art school and reading art history at Stockholm University. In the end I compromised by doing my first degree specializing in architectural history while also taking life drawing classes. After graduation I joined the Swedish National Art Museums (Nationalmuseum) in Stockholm as a curator in the Royal Castles Collection; I was to remain with the Nationalmuseum for the next 37 years, specializing in the 18th century. Meanwhile, as a student I had met Ursula, who was also studying art history; we married in 1965 and began our life together in a small timber house on my parents' property near Stockholm while we searched for a house of our own. In 1966 I heard about the Rococo manor at Regnaholm (see page xx). It was a substantial plastered brick house on the waterfront of a large lake, with beautiful views and, best of all for me, was almost completely unmodernized. My imagination was set on fire, and my enthusiasm was matched by my father's when we bought it as a joint venture and started to revive it. However, apart from the fact that there were no facilities in the house at all, I could see that driving 200 kilometres to Stockholm and back every day was not practical, so it so it became a place for holidays for our extended family rather than a home for my immediate family. I suspect that from the beginning my idea of an ideal house did not coincide with Ursula's, and it was almost another decade before we found a house that we could both contemplate living in: Odenslunda (see page xx). It was old - again, 18th century, but compact, made chiefly of timber, within easy reach of Stockholm and, best of all for Ursula, it had a 19th-century addition that provided space for a modern kitchen and bathroom. In some ways it was the house of my childhood dreams in that it was a small manor house dating back to the 18th century, but it did not quench my longing for a more substantial stone or brick house that I could restore in a truly authentic way. This is perhaps why I fell in love at first sight with Ekensberg (see page xx). Not only was this an imposing brick house with a Neo-classical façade set superbly in landscaped surroundings, but its architectural planning was also masterly and it had exquisite late 18th- and early 19th-century decorations - though they were buried under layers of 20th-century paint and wallpaper.I had by then, in the mid 1970s, started to teach in a programme on architectural restoration at Stockholm University. When I had studied architectural history at university, I had found that we were never urged to learn about the practical side of the buildings that we were studying - it seemed that having the drawings and the documentation was enough. For me, theory is not enough: I believe that there is nothing like handling the actual materials, seeing how they were put together, to teach us about the past. My students in the programme learned how to plaster inside and outside houses, to take to pieces and then reconstruct ceramic stoves, to make oil paint, calcium paint and lime wash using old ingredients and methods, and they learned to strip away unwanted layers of paint or wallpaper and to recognize what lay beneath. This last skill is crucial in preserving the past: it is not the raw wood but the first layer of paint that is important. Worn as it may be, it is the evidence of what was in the creators' minds, which to me is invaluable in conveying the essence of the place. Occasionally my students visited Ekensberg to see and, just as importantly, to feel, the original 18th-century building materials. This concern with the practicalities of historical construction has become one of my passionate interests. I have hated seeing historic old buildings torn down since my schooldays when I witnessed marvellous Baroque buildings in central Stockholm being bulldozed. I knew that they could never be replaced and that with each lorry load of rubble we were losing some knowledge of the techniques - and thus some understanding - of the past. Over the years I became increasingly aware that old buildings and their interiors are an inherent part of our Swedish heritage. With several other people I tried, unsuccessfully, to get some sort of organization akin to the British National Trust off the ground, whereby historic houses might be saved for the future for Sweden. In the end it seemed to me that my best means of preventing venerable buildings from being demolished was to purchase them. This is essentially why I bought Sörby (see page xx), and then Bratteberg (see page xx), Dylta Bruk, and Bollsta Bruk (see page xx). Unlike Regnaholm or Ekensberg, there was no question of sleeping in any one of these three, even for a night. But each had its own special qualities that I did not want to see disappear forever: each expresses important aspects of Swedish identity.Sörby and Bratteberg represent instalments in the fascinating story of how architectural concepts percolated through society during the 17th and 18th centuries. From the illustrations in Svecia Antiqua we can see how in the 17th century the aristocracy revealed their ideals and ambitions in their houses. A hundred years later, in the 1780s, when a priest purchased one of these manor houses in the tiny hamlet of Sörby, he also acquired something of the status of the noble family who had possessed it earlier. (He then redecorated the interiors in the latest fashion, which he brought from Stockholm where he had been employed at Court.) Fifty years after that, similar upwardly-mobile desires caused a farmer to commission a house at Bratteberg based on the classic pattern of a 17th-century manor house with two wings. Bratteberg has the extra dimension of interest in being more than one house: it is a group of five architecturally integrated buildings laid out on a geometrical grid that tells us a good deal about rural life at the turn of the 19th century. The two main wings are the exactly the same size as Sörby and one has the same floor plan - a plan that can be traced back almost 200 years to its debut in Svecia Antiqua.Dylta Bruk and Bollsta Bruk have different heritages, but each is again a telling example of the ideals and ambitions of their builders, which in turn tell us more about Sweden at the time that they were built. When Dylta Bruk was built in c. 1800, to accommodate eight families of smelting workers, it was the most impressive building in the area, and almost as large as the timber manor house that belonged to the same family. Placed at the entrance to the works complex, it was designed to show off both the prestige of the works and the prosperity of the owners. Bollsta Bruk, a wooden church built for the Swedish Evangelical Mission in c. 1900, is a showpiece of a different kind. It is a testament both to the timber industry on which the village of Bollsta Bruk was founded, and to its era - it is a splendid amalgam of turn-of-the-century styles. Though all these buildings speak of their time and place, it is the unique character of each that I want to preserve.In the case of my houses at Salahom (see page xx) and at Leufsta Bruk (see page xx), it was not that they were threatened with demolition, but rather my respect for their historical qualities that led me to acquire them. The fact that my father's family had its roots in the neighbourhood of Salaholm had a strong influence on my feelings when I saw the house; I was also seduced by its age - it was older than any of my other properties - and its charming position in the midst of woodland. As for Leufsta Bruk, it was pure admiration for the house's superb architectural qualities that inspired me to purchase it; I consider it to be one of the best brick buildings of the Gustavian period in Sweden. In the mid 1960s, when my parents and I bought Regnaholm, it was regarded as a little cranky to restore a large 18th-century house: this was partly because the intrinsic value of preserving the past had not been widely considered, and partly because it went against the prevailing grain, which was directed in a search for low-cost, low-maintenance housing. By the end of the 1980s, when I acquired Sörby, attitudes were changing and there was a growing interest in historic architecture and interiors in Sweden paralleled with a new interest in sustainability. Both these strands were reflected in the success of the reconstruction of Sörby at the Nationalmuseum in 1994, and in IKEA's decision to manufacture a range of 18th-century style furniture at almost the same time. I had seen how the simplicity and functionalism of Sörby's 18th-century design could make it an exemplary model for new-build houses, using time-honoured, sustainable materials, and how the quality of its interior decoration would have an immediate appeal. I think that IKEA was first inspired by seeing an exhibition that I organized in Kotka in 1990 (see page xx) when the wall panels from Sörby were displayed with 18th-century furniture and with fabrics that I had had re-woven and printed from 18th-century samples. From this germ of an idea, IKEA's project eventually evolved as a co-operative deal between them and the Board of National Antiquities. The latter appointed me in 1990 to advise and assist IKEA and, in a close collaboration that lasted five years, we produced faithful copies of original furnishings ranging from chairs, sofas and beds, through tables and chests of drawers to fabric, tableware and chandeliers. Though extremely popular, these ultimately proved too difficult to make and ship in the quantities that IKEA needed. However, it showed that it was possible to make affordable reproductions of high quality, and it is satisfying to find that these pieces are still much sought-after when they are offered for sale at auction.At about the same time, in the mid 1990s, I became involved with setting up a school that teaches the traditional skills entailed in the process of building and furnishing a wooden house. The idea was sparked by a carpentry teacher who had heard me lecturing at a symposium at Sundsvall and asked me to teach young people how to make 18th-century furniture. The result was the establishment of the Träakademien (Wood Academy) in Kramfors, Västernorrland, which teaches not only woodwork and cabinet-making, but upholstery and blacksmithing, carving and gilding. The idea behind this venture is to keep these centuries-old skills alive and thereby to foster recognition of the contribution of the past. This is not just for its own sake. In an era when everything in the Western world appears to be mass-produced - often with built-in obsolescence - at the lowest possible price, it seems that we are in danger of losing the ability to value or maintain things that are of time-honoured quality. We throw away our household possessions after a decade or so, as though they were trash, often because they are cheaply made of inferior materials. A skilled craftsman, however, can make the same objects - a window frame, a chair or a door catch - that will last a hundred or two hundred years. Even in those parts of the world where the art of wood carving is still flourishing, the knowledge of the different ways in which particular types of wood expand and contract, which is crucial to the life of a piece of furniture, seems to have been lost. This knowledge goes back over a thousand years of timber house-building and cabinet-making and is part of what we try to teach at Kramfors. I feel very strongly that it is ultimately damaging to our humanity if we surround ourselves with things that are not worth maintaining or restoring. It must affect our psyches to know that we live in an ephemeral world, bequeathing little of lasting value to the coming generations. In a similar way, I feel that if we bulldoze or strip away the past we are depriving the next generation of an essential part of their cultural heritage. My goals have always been to salvage and to reveal hidden qualities wherever possible. While the preservation of artistic heritage and the duplication of it are not, of course, the same thing, it seems to me that they are both sides of the same coin. If we can learn how things were made in the past, we may come to understand the past better and in so doing come to value it more.