Country Living Christmas

Here is my dining room hallway in the mood for Christmas and ready for it's Country Living magazine close-up! That's right...Country Living was here last winter and decked the halls with me. You can see the results in this months December issue. Amid a flurry of wheat sheaves and pine boughs stylist Karen Lidbeck-Brent and her sister arrived one cold winter morning. Lots of baking, trimming and sharing of our favorite Swedish Christmas traditions took place in preparation for the arrival the next day of the magazine's Style & Market Director Natalie Warady, photographer Lisa Hubbard and their crew.

As soon as the photographer looks through the lens - everything changes.

To give you an idea, this shot was done three or four times using different

height tables, chairs and ornaments of mine before this arrangement was

selected by Lisa, Karen and Natalie.

To give the room a more cozy country feel, out went my French settee and Gustavian chairs and in came Lars' armchair from his bedroom! The kids and I loved the armchair downstairs so much so that after the photo shoot I incorporated it into the room.

The straw goat next to the Christmas tree is called a Julbuck and is one of the ancient pagan symbols of the winter solstice that has made it's way into the traditional Swedish Christmas. In Norse mythology, a pair of goats pulled Thor's chariot and the sun across the Northern sky and so the goat made of straw came to symbolize hope for the life giving return of the sun and a fruitful harvest. Little straw goat ornaments also hang from the tree along with bundles of wheat sheaves.

There is nothing more evocative of winter to me then fir garland hung against antique wood panelling (as in this photo of the front hall stairwell). The giant star in the picture is made from wheat stalks and ribbon. This is easy for kids to make and the stars look great hung outside on trees or in windows. Karen rested the star on an open 19th c. Lappland Dowery trunk that I use to keep my most precious holiday ornaments and mementos.

The straw theme continues in the bedroom where small straw star ornaments are hung in the

window. I usually love patterned sheets, preferably a bold toile by Pierre Frey, but for a soothing winter sleep, organic linens and flannels of pale blue can't be beat. A faux fur throw, borrowed at the last minute from our old school chum Alex Smith at Dovecote, Westport, adds a glam touch. Thanks Alex!




Here is the breakfast room of the kitchen laid out for Christmas Eve breakfast. The wheat stalks in hurricanes would look equally dramatic on a very modern dining table, don't you think? I wish I had a close up of the center of the table to show you the giant candle surrounded by crab apples on a massive Swedish wooden berry sorter.

Rhonda and I thought of bringing in this authentic 19th c. Swedish chandelier for the photo shoot

from our Eleish van Breems showroom. Alas, Rhonda knows me too well... Once in my home, she was afraid there would be a good chance of the chandelier never making it back to our sales floor so it stayed in Washington Depot! Isn't it fantastic?

The chairs around my kitchen table are called Draken chairs from our Eleish van Breems reproduction line of furniture. All made in Sweden, the furniture we carry arrives raw and is painted in our workshop to clients specifications. We offer a huge range of colors and finishes and most of our work is custom - meaning we will match colors exactly to upholstery, paint chips etc. and do custom finishes. For my own kitchen I chose to have these Draken chairs done in a deep blue green with Elmo leather upholstered seats.

My only regret about the photo shoot is that we did not bring in a real Swedish trestle table.We carry many wonderful antique Swedish trestle tables such as the one pictured above. They make super kitchen tables as well as worktables for offices.

Wooden farm containers and bowls filled with greens, ornaments and pine cones are displayed on a Finnish kettle cabinet in this holiday card vignette. The empty frame idea is something children love and you can set up these "holiday frames" to have in their own rooms to decorate

and collect their cards from friends and relatives.

Banded wooden drinking flasks, such as this one from Sweden, are wonderful to bring out anput sprays of greenery in .

We have always used copper vessels of all shapes and sizes at Eleish van Breems http://www.evbantiques.com/ for seasonal arrangements and in fact, they've become something of our signature. These wonderful Swedish copper pieces will always be my favorite forms of planter as they add a warm glow to a room, offsetting the flowers they hold so complementarily.

The antique Swedish copper foot bath pictured above needs only to be lined with a plastic sheeting and filled with pots of amaryllis or narcissus bulbs to make a full holiday centerpiece. Rhonda and I like to "finish " off the copper containers with either stones or moss nestled into the base of the plants.

Here, a feather tree covered in candy canes and marzipan fruits is put into copper pot.

The Dala horse cookies on the sideboard are actually nestled into a 19th c. Swedish

butter mold from a farm in Dalarna. Dalarna is a province north of Stockholm and one of Rhonda's and my favorite places to find our antiques.

Two more examples of the 19th c. Swedish copper molds...

This one is a steamed pudding mold. Many of our culinary clientele have these antique

pieces professionally re-lined by metal smiths in order to use them. NEVER cook with an antique copper mold that has not been professionally re-lined. Never. Never. They all went a bit kookey

in the olden days from trace elements of lead, mercury etc. in the tin so please everyone - professional relining or just enjoy antique molds decoratively.

Taking out the giant cookie cutters, variously shaped as reindeer, stars, snowflakes and

angels and spending the afternoon baking pepparkakor is one of our family rituals captured

here by Lisa. For those unfamiliar, pepparkakor are the fragrant ginger, cardamon and

cinnamon infused cookies served throughout the holiday season in Sweden. We also have a lot of fun making marzipan and shaping it into animals. The pig is the most traditionally Swedish of these.

Ultimately, it fell to writer Paige Orloff to bring our Christmas rituals to life in words for the magazine. I knew I was in good hands when I realized that Paige is among the founders of The Sister Project blog! http://thesisterproject.com/orloff/

Many thanks to everyone at Country Living for such a fun article on our Swedish

Christmas. I hope this inspires you, adventuresome reader, to bring the outdoors

in and gather your loved ones close for some holiday fun!

Happy December!

E.


All photos of Edie's house in this post are by: Lisa Hubbard

To read the Country Living article Home Swede Home in the December, 2009 issue go to

http://www.countryliving.com/homes/house-tours/swedish-christmas-traditions-1209

To shop Eleish van Breems http://www.evbantiques.com/

For Swedish decorations http://www.scandiafood.com/

To say Hello to Alex and grab a throw www.dovecote-westport.com

I Dreamed of a Faro Retreat

In my dreams last night I have been accepted to be a visiting artist at Ingmar Bergman's estate on the Baltic island of Faro. I get off of the ferry and Stockholm based super stylist Eva Lindh appears from a mist on the beach, ready to outfit me in cozy woolens ... (photo: Lena Koller Image from http://www.evalindh.se/)

or more practically, for walks around the island, in coat and hat - faux chinchilla for me please.

(Photo: Lana Koller Image from http://www.evalindh.se/)

When I get to the house, I find I need to cheer the place up a bit and reupholster the chairs in Ingmar's screening room with Svenskt Tenn fabric. http://www.svenskttenn.se/

I am ready to record all I see in my social diarist Archie Grand notebooks. http://www.archiegrand.com/

Being the end of November, it is cold on Faro so I gather pillows and blankets together...
(Photo: Anna Kern Image from http://www.evalindh.se/)

among them is my favorite throw by Pia Wallen. http://www.piawallen.se/

I make cocoa for all of the other visiting artists, writers and filmmakers.

We gather around a small table. As I blushingly begin to admit to the group my schoolgirl fixation on Max von Sydow I lower the tray of drinks. (Photo: Charlie Drevstam image from http://www.evalindh.se/) There is no room on this little table for the tray let alone a chess board. Is that Max I see sitting on the couch? I feel my wrist go limp. The tray crashes. Candles are knocked over. My dream is swiftly turning into a nightmare and all I see are flames. Anguish and dark thoughts fill my heart...

I awake in a panic to hear myself crying out into the darkness. "....why, oh WHY, did I not enter Ingmar's living room into the Brickmaker's Coffee Table give away contest at Brooke Giannetti's Velvet & Linen?!?! " http://www.brookegianetti.typepad.com/

It is too late for me and that heavy tray but not for the lucky contestants. Help Brooke out by going to her site and voting on your favorite room. The contest ends this Sunday, November 29th.

E.

Island Muse Faro

I was at Christies Auction house in New York on Thursday helping to set up for a fundraiser I am involved in each year, the Tibet House Benefit Auction event. I had to pass many times that day through the front entrance of Christies, where there are large screens displaying various upcoming auction events and Christies Luxury Properties for sale. I was stopped dead in my tracks more then once by luminous images of landscapes featuring rustic boulders, pebbled shores and windmills. It all looked vaguely familiar.

Where was this? The island of Faro and the property listed was Ingmar Bergman's estate that had sold just two weeks previously. The Christies catalog describes the property as such:

The estate’s four dwellings are set amid a rustic backdrop of dunes, boulders, and tumbling waters....

...Hammars is the main house, secluded along a road that winds through pine forests and quiet meadows. Completed in 1967, it remains an integral part of the island, along with the pebbled shores and luminous sky. Framing gorgeous sea vistas, the residence was designed by architect Kjell Abramson in close collaboration with Bergman himself. The writing lodge is an idyllic two-room timber structure with a magnificent ocean view; it can be seen in the final sequence of the iconic television drama “Scenes from a Marriage.” The serene terrain here is defined by fossils, pine trees, and an undisturbed horizon with ever-changing light.

Situated on an open meadow, Ängen is a comfortable winter retreat house, built in a classic Gotland style by expert craftsmen and offering three bedrooms, a living room with an impressive fireplace, and an inner courtyard that glows with lilacs in summer. Finally, just a short walk from the water is Dämba, a beautifully restored 1854 farmhouse. In an old whitewashed barn situated nearby is Bergman’s private cinema, where he watched films every day." (photos of estate from Christies Properties)

Sven Nykvist (left) and Ingmar Bergman on Faro. Photo: Associated Press

Bergman was arguably one of the most influential filmmakers of the 20th century producing films such as The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Cries and Whispers and Fanny & Alexander. Bergman fell in love with Faro when he came to the island with legendary cinematographer Sven Nykvist in 1960 to scout for the film Through a Glass Darkly. He says in the film documentary Bergman Island that he felt instantly at at peace on the island as if he had come home. Although Bergman had many marriages (six wives, nine children) the island of Faro seems to me to have been his biggest muse. It is here that he wrote and filmed most of his work and chose to live full time, very much in tune with the island's unique light and rugged beauty. I tried to find pictures of the houses but was unable to come up with much. The rooms are very sparse and to get a good look one should go to the W Magazine video of Bergman's home at: http://www.wmagazine.com/video?videoID=46093135001 .

From left, Ingmar Bergman, Sven Nykvist, Erland Josephson and Liv Ullman filming Scenes from a Marriage. Photo from The Everett Collection.

To live on an island, simply. To live surrounded by books, film projects and with a barn devoted to screening films twice a day. To be so at one with your home that you think nothing of writing notes on the surfaces of your walls and bedside tables. To live with your home as a personal diary and laboratory. This is how Ingmar Bergamn lived - what freedom!

The property is being prepared at the moment for a further creative future! It was bought by the Norwegian inventor, Hans Gude Gudeson and will be turned into an artists' retreat. Linn Ullman, Bergman's daugher with Liv Ullman says of this development, " Faro was a working place and will continue to be. There will be new books written, new films will be develpoed and new projects will be made."

I am so inspired that I may just apply for a grant! Where do you like to live and create?

Do remote islands hold any appeal to you? We'd love to know!