Black and white

Coco Chanel once declared "Black goes with everything. White also. They have absolute beauty. It is the perfect match." I find black and white interiors so beautiful and relaxing and my apartment has a very restricted colour scale. Ulrika doesn't share my passion and tries to talk me into adding colour "for Mimmi's sake, she would love some red". Her attempts have not been very successful. Above a selection of black and white rooms from Living etc, Domino Magazine and B&B Italia.

Terence Woodgate

Born in London in 1953, Terence Woodgate initially trained as a design engineer but in the mid-1980s, he returned to London Guildhall University to study furniture design. Gin Table was designed in 2004 and is constructed out of one single shape. The soft rectangle appears in the shape of the tabletop and lower surface, and then, turned vertically, it becomes the shape of the legs. The Low Dresser is from the Sussex Collection. Woodgate has considered every detail, even the drawer interiors, which are the precise size of two folded shirts side by side, without overlap or wasted space. Fully finished on all sides it can act as a room divider. Examples of Woodgate's work are held at the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Museu d'Arts Decoratives in Barcelona.

Malin Lundmark

On display at the Milan Furniture Fair 2007 were these jewellery drawers and the jewellery lamp by Swedish designer Malin Lundmark. Malin works with both functional products and unique poetic pieces. Her main philosophy when she creates something, whether it is for an exhibition or a product, is to mix playfulness, function and decoration.

Malin is one of our neigbours at Telefonplan in Stockholm. During the Stockholm Furniture Fair 2007 we arranged an alternative fair called Design Non Stop together with other design companies in the area. Twenty companies showed fashion, graphic design, illustration, film, textile design and some furniture. Malin then exhibited "Aeroplane light", "Aeroplane light - floor lamp" and "Flower" - a hanger in the shape of a flower.

"Everything I make becomes a part of my Wonderland world, a world where fantasy becomes reality, a world where environment and products come together to create a completeness, just like on a stage or in a set design. As children we see the potential in everything around us. Imagination flows and a simple piece of stone can be transformed into anything. As we grow older we stop playing. With my products and my way of thinking I want to introduce playfulnessand unexpected experiences into every day life."

Smådalarö

I'm spending two weeks in a house at Smådalarö in the archipelago outside Stockholm. The house has a fabulous view and we sit on the veranda for hours just looking out over the water.

Midsummer at Arholma

Some photos from where I spent my midsummer weekend. Together with my family I went visiting Jocke and Emma and their kids in their summer house at Arholma, a fantastic island in the northern part of the Stockholm archipelago. They are renovating their house totally but very carefully. The house is from the beginning of the 20th century and is on its way to become a real beauty. After visiting them I now really long for a summer house of my own (even though I don’t like the thought of renovating a house the whole vacation).

Andyland's new exhibition

This is a picture from Andyland’s new exhibition at Le Café in Sturegallerian. We have some artwork in the nightclub Neu at Stureplan and some in Le Café (which at night is a part of Neu).Hope you have a chance to come and look!

Maria Westerberg lamps

I found these beautiful glass lamps at the store Grandpa in Stockholm. They are made by Maria Westerberg from recycled glass. I don’t find a webpage where you can see more of Maria Westerberg’s lamps and glass sculptures but here is her My Space site. Grandpa is by the way a cool store worth visiting. Off and on you also find art from our web gallery Andyland there.

Bed loft stairs + book shelf

I found this cool and practical combination of a book shelf and a stair to a bed loft at www.compact-living.com. It’s really expensive, but now I started to dream about having a bed loft. We live in an apartment too small and could really need more compact living solutions to get more floor space. We're probably always going to live too small so now I'm going to search for more smart compact living solutions to blog about.

An old beauty

This beautiful old Ford pickup truck was parked today near my house. I've never seen anything like it in Stockholm before. It's definitely from another time and world. On the loading platform there was a trunk that looked like it belonged to the same time.

Fru Söder & Wanjas vardagsrum

I just found a new favourite shop in Hornstull called Fru Söder & Wanjas vardagsrum. It’s a small shop that first looks like a junk market. They have furniture, clothes, shoes, bags, kids clothes, lamps, glass, ceramics and a lot of funny small little things from the 50’s to the 80’s. They have a lot of junk but also a lot of really nice stuff. I found cute furniture for the doll house, Stig Lindberg ashtrays, glass from Reijmyre and Mon amie cups from Rörstrand. I really like shops with a feeling that you can find a real bargain. The address is Lindvallsgatan 4 and they are open fri-sun afternoon.

Olga Popyrina Thorsen

I found these lamps by Olga Popyrina Thorsen at Furnish. The black or white one called Four in one would be perfect for my livingroom windows - it has a nice sixties look and it is slim but tall, it varies from 38-61 cm depending on how many ceramic rounds are used.

New kitchen floor

Here is how my kithen floor turned out. I am so happy about it! After the wood had been grinded it was first stained black and then treated three times with varnish mixed with some black colour. The result is better than I would have ever expected.

This is a before-image. It doesn't look quite as ugly here as it really did!

Fabrikat

Linda Sjunnesson is a friend of Ulrika's and mine who is a textile designer. She runs a company called Fabrikat together with designer Åsa Ericson. Linda has designed beautiful textile patterns for different Swedish companies, for example this one called Skiffer for Spira.