Wow! eBook
Swedish Country Interiors
Author(s): Rhonda Eleish (Author), Edie Bernhard Van Breems (Author), Jon E. Monson (Photographer), L. Langdon Ergmann (Photographer)
- Publisher: Gibbs Smith
- Publication Date: January 1, 2009
- Edition: 1st
- Language: English
- Print length: 192 pages
- ISBN-10: 1423604423
- ISBN-13: 9781423604426
Book Description
As featured in Country Living! Showcases fifteen beautiful homes that highlight the stylish interpretations of Swedish country
Swedish Country Interiors showcases homes that have a wide spectrum of interpretations of Swedish country style—rustic, rural, urban, comfortable, family friendly, elegant, simple, complex, grand, humble, and eclectic. Also found are numerous examples of Swedish country living that the homeowners have embraced and derived inspiration from, including wall decorations, functional furnishings, natural upholstery materials, light, and indoor-outdoor living.
Editorial Reviews
From the Inside Flap
Whether it’s the tall, folk-painted Swedish case clocks, checked ginghams, natural wood flooring, or the allowance of an abundance of light into interior living spaces, Swedish country style draws people from all walks of life with its fresh, clean, comfortable, and well-designed look.
Authors Rhonda Eleish and Edie van Breems combine their many years of experience and expertise as interior designers and Swedish antiques dealers to show how you can incorporate Swedish design into your living spaces.
Ranging from a single room to an entire country retreat, from a pool house or an artist’s cottage to living spaces on a grand scale, the many interpretations of Swedish country offer a multitude of design possibilities. The style values mixing the old with the new and favors functionality along with tradition. It is recognized by its bright color palette, pickled wood floors, minimal window treatments, and folk-painted clocks, trunks, and wall hangings, or bonads. Country style can be interpreted from the rustic, with dark woods and painted walls, to the elegant Gustavian style with crystal lighting and gilt wood frames. Swedish country translates very naturally in a contemporary modern setting and is perfect for family friendly living.
Swedish Country Interiors showcases fifteen homes from across the United States that are varied in scale, style, and interpretation. Among them are a neoclassical home with Swedish influence situated in Atlanta, a mill house for an old paper factory that has been converted to a beautiful weekend living space in Connecticut, and a California beach house in Laguna Beach made to be the perfect Swedish country retreat.
As a stand-alone or the perfect companion volume to Swedish Interiors, this book will put beauty and hours of inspiration into your hands and home.
Whether it’s the tall, folk-painted Swedish case clocks, checked ginghams, natural wood flooring, or the allowance of an abundance of light into interior living spaces, Swedish country style draws people from all walks of life with its fresh, clean, comfortable, and well-designed look.
Authors Rhonda Eleish and Edie van Breems combine their many years of experience and expertise as interior designers and Swedish antiques dealers to show how you can incorporate Swedish design into your living spaces.
Ranging from a single room to an entire country retreat, from a pool house or an artist’s cottage to living spaces on a grand scale, the many interpretations of Swedish country offer a multitude of design possibilities. The style values mixing the old with the new and favors functionality along with tradition. It is recognized by its bright color palette, pickled wood floors, minimal window treatments, and folk-painted clocks, trunks, and wall hangings, or bonads. Country style can be interpreted from the rustic, with dark woods and painted walls, to the elegant Gustavian style with crystal lighting and gilt wood frames. Swedish country translates very naturally in a contemporary modern setting and is perfect for family friendly living.
Swedish Country Interiors showcases fifteen homes from across the United States that are varied in scale, style, and interpretation. Among them are a neoclassical home with Swedish influence situated in Atlanta, a mill house for an old paper factory that has been converted to a beautiful weekend living space in Connecticut, and a California beach house in Laguna Beach made to be the perfect Swedish country retreat. As a stand-alone or the perfect companion volume to Swedish Interiors, this book will put beauty and hours of inspiration into your hands and home.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Rhonda Eleish and Edie van Breems opened the doors to Eleish van Breems Antiques in 1998, specializing in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Swedish antiques. Their company, Eleish van Breems Ltd. has expanded to become a full service Nordic design showroom and they are sought out for their interiors featuring the best hallmarks of Scandinavian design. The authors, who first published Swedish Interiors, and their antiques and interiors have been featured in many national publications, including Country Living, Victoria, and House Beautiful, and they have made appearances on Martha Stewart and HGTV Canada. Rhonda resides in Bridgewater, Connecticut with her daughter Kari and husband Buffer. Edie lives with her family in a 1760 colonial home in Fairfield, Connecticut.
About the Photographers
Jon E. Monson and L. Langdon “Buffer” Ergmann of Endo Graphics, Danbury, Connecticut, have a combined sixty years of experience in the prepress/print graphics industry, specializing in color, design, and digital retouching photography. Jon and Buffer have traveled both the United States and Europe for location commercial shoots as well as working extensively on in-house art and commercial projects. Both Jon and Buffer live in Bridgewater, Connecticut; Jon with his wife, Melinda, and Buffer with his wife, Rhonda Eleish, and their daughter Kari.
From the Back Cover
Whether it’s the tall, folk-painted Swedish case clocks, checked ginghams, natural wood flooring, or the allowance of an abundance of light into interior living spaces, Swedish country style draws people from all walks of life with its fresh, clean, comfortable, and well-designed look.
Authors Rhonda Eleish and Edie van Breems combine their many years of experience and expertise as interior designers and Swedish antiques dealers to show how you can incorporate Swedish design into your living spaces.
Ranging from a single room to an entire country retreat, from a pool house or an artist’s cottage to living spaces on a grand scale, the many interpretations of Swedish country offer a multitude of design possibilities. The style values mixing the old with the new and favors functionality along with tradition. It is recognized by its bright color palette, pickled wood floors, minimal window treatments, and folk-painted clocks, trunks, and wall hangings, or bonads. Country style can be interpreted from the rustic, with dark woods and painted walls, to the elegant Gustavian style with crystal lighting and gilt wood frames. Swedish country translates very naturally in a contemporary modern setting and is perfect for family friendly living.
Swedish Country Interiors showcases fifteen homes from across the United States that are varied in scale, style, and interpretation. Among them are a neoclassical home with Swedish influence situated in Atlanta, a mill house for an old paper factory that has been converted to a beautiful weekend living space in Connecticut, and a California beach house in Laguna Beach made to be the perfect Swedish country retreat.
As a stand-alone or the perfect companion volume to Swedish Interiors, this book will put beauty and hours of inspiration into your hands and home.
Whether it’s the tall, folk-painted Swedish case clocks, checked ginghams, natural wood flooring, or the allowance of an abundance of light into interior living spaces, Swedish country style draws people from all walks of life with its fresh, clean, comfortable, and well-designed look.
Authors Rhonda Eleish and Edie van Breems combine their many years of experience and expertise as interior designers and Swedish antiques dealers to show how you can incorporate Swedish design into your living spaces.
Ranging from a single room to an entire country retreat, from a pool house or an artist’s cottage to living spaces on a grand scale, the many interpretations of Swedish country offer a multitude of design possibilities. The style values mixing the old with the new and favors functionality along with tradition. It is recognized by its bright color palette, pickled wood floors, minimal window treatments, and folk-painted clocks, trunks, and wall hangings, or bonads. Country style can be interpreted from the rustic, with dark woods and painted walls, to the elegant Gustavian style with crystal lighting and gilt wood frames. Swedish country translates very naturally in a contemporary modern setting and is perfect for family friendly living.
Swedish Country Interiors showcases fifteen homes from across the United States that are varied in scale, style, and interpretation. Among them are a neoclassical home with Swedish influence situated in Atlanta, a mill house for an old paper factory that has been converted to a beautiful weekend living space in Connecticut, and a California beach house in Laguna Beach made to be the perfect Swedish country retreat. As a stand-alone or the perfect companion volume to Swedish Interiors, this book will put beauty and hours of inspiration into your hands and home.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Rhonda Eleish and Edie van Breems opened the doors to Eleish van Breems Antiques in 1998, specializing in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Swedish antiques. Their company, Eleish van Breems Ltd. has expanded to become a full service Nordic design showroom and they are sought out for their interiors featuring the best hallmarks of Scandinavian design. The authors, who first published Swedish Interiors, and their antiques and interiors have been featured in many national publications, including Country Living, Victoria, and House Beautiful, and they have made appearances on Martha Stewart and HGTV Canada. Rhonda resides in Bridgewater, Connecticut with her daughter Kari and husband Buffer. Edie lives with her family in a 1760 colonial home in Fairfield, Connecticut.
About the Photographers
Jon E. Monson and L. Langdon “Buffer” Ergmann of Endo Graphics, Danbury, Connecticut, have a combined sixty years of experience in the prepress/print graphics industry, specializing in color, design, and digital retouching photography. Jon and Buffer have traveled both the United States and Europe for location commercial shoots as well as working extensively on in-house art and commercial projects. Both Jon and Buffer live in Bridgewater, Connecticut; Jon with his wife, Melinda, and Buffer with his wife, Rhonda Eleish, and their daughter Kari.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Welcome! Swedish Interiors, our first book, was an overview of the history of Swedish design and how various homeowners and designers have been inspired to use those design elements in their homes. In this book, we are thrilled to have theopportunity to delve further into one style of Swedish design—Swedish country interiors—a subject most close to our hearts. As antiques dealers specializing in Swedish eighteenth- and nineteenth-century furnishings, we have had the pleasure to travel Sweden extensively. In our journeys over the past ten years, we have found ourselves not only inspired but fascinated by the strong beauty of antique Swedish country furnishings and the rhythms of a long-ago way of life. Interviews with Swedish farmers, reminiscences with elderly Swedish relatives, research at the Nordic Museum, and visits to Skansen (Stockholm’s open-air museum) served to whet our appetites formore knowledge of Swedish country furnishings and design.
Before we knew it, we had become obsessed with not just furniture but every dust-covered tool we stumbled upon from this vibrant pre-twentieth-century flax-and-milk-based culture. We spent long hours hand-mixing pigment paints and learningthe secrets, frustrations, and joys of working with natural Swedish materials as we attempted to incorporate what we had seen in Sweden into our own homes and our store, Eleish Van Breems Antiques.
In writing this book we have looked back and considered why the country traditions in particular held so much appeal for us. The stunning formal Gustavian furniture of the cities is what had originally lured us to buy furniture in Sweden, but we clearly had fallen under the spell of the allmoge, a word that translates to “folk” or “of the people.” We both had homes of our own in the Connecticut countryside with children, husbands, and animals to tend to, so one might infer that we found the idea of farm living intellectually relatable. However, it is precisely the differences between our world and that of the Swedish country house that captured our attention. We were truly humbled and in awe of a people who were in tune with the rhythms of nature, and we admired their inventive mastery of precious native materials.
As we began to speak with other collectors and admirers of both provincial and peasant Swedish country style, we were struck by how the Swedish country way of life and the practical yet exciting hallmarks of Swedish eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury decoration are touch points that we could incorporate into our own homes. In Swedish Country Interiors, you will find numerous examples of Swedish country living that the homeowners in this book have embraced and from which they have derived inspiration including wall decorations, functional furnishings, natural upholstery materials, use of light, and indooroutdoor living, to name but a few. Although we are devoted antiquarians, our interest is not in showing pristine pastiches of Swedish folk interiors. What excites us is the opportunity to share how various homeowners live today in our very own countryside and city suburbs, blending within their contemporary homes the very best that Swedish country lifestyle and design has to offer. We thank each one of them for sharing their individual love affairs with Sweden and for allowing us to present the unique beauty of their homes with the world beyond theirwelcoming garden gates.
