Product Description

Beautiful images reveal the Swedish room as a work of art that has a place in every home.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #232765 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

Amazon.com Review
The Swedish palette of soft pastels conveys an aesthetic simplicity like no other. Even though I do not live in a stately mansion or a castle (beautifully photographed throughout the book) I became inspired to add the same colors and textures to my own decor. Stenciled borders, tromp l' oleil, marbling, and delicately painted wall canvases add harmony and warmth to your living space.

Review
Praise for The Swedish Room

"The Swedes have long been some of the cleverest colorists around, as Lars and Ursula Sjoberg reveal in their new book."

-- Town and Country

"[Here are] inspiring images of rough-edged but strangely regal eighteenth-century farms, country houses, and city mansions. Poetic, accessible juxtapositions abound. Homespun gingham checks upholster Versailles - style chairs. Town houses display humble whitewashed walls, while artful stenciling decorates their country cousins."

-- Mitchell Owens, New York Times -- Review

Review
Praise for The Swedish Room

"The Swedes have long been some of the cleverest colorists around, as Lars and Ursula Sjoberg reveal in their new book."

-- Town and Country

"[Here are] inspiring images of rough-edged but strangely regal eighteenth-century farms, country houses, and city mansions. Poetic, accessible juxtapositions abound. Homespun gingham checks upholster Versailles - style chairs. Town houses display humble whitewashed walls, while artful stenciling decorates their country cousins."

-- Mitchell Owens, New York Times

Customer Reviews

The Swedish Room
Beautiful book, well researched and written with carefully selected and beautiful photos. A must have for anyone interested in Gustavian interiors and the homes that contain them. The interiors selected for this book are the relatively simpler ones with soft color schemes and a cleaner, pared-down look - ones more acceptable to contemporary tastes - rather than the gilded neoclassical palaces of the same period. If you are interested in the more palatial interiors of the same period I recommend: Neoclassicism in the North, Swedish Furniture and Interiors 1770-1850 . I noticed in browsing through this book, that a number of the interiors selected for inclusion in The Swedish Room are actually the simplest rooms in otherwise grand palaces.
A very pleasing selection of interior views overall and much better than Barbara Stoeltie's similar book, The Country Houses of Sweden.

Swedish interiors through the centuries
The cover and the look-inside-glimpse do not do this book justice att all. It's not all that rural and folksy, but has wide range of interiors from palaces, mansions, farms and cottages. The in-put from Italy (and later France) was huge in the days when Sweden was a major European power in the 17th century. The book moves on into the Gustavian era of simple elegance and continues to regency and the summer-houses that became popular in the 19th century. A very well illustrated book with excellent photos.

Comprehensive & useful
I have found this book a constant inspiration when considering the Swedish style in general and Gustavian in particular.

The photos and colours are excellent. The text begins by being historically interesting and illuminating but becomes unfocussed and then banal. The translation is awkward in parts. Still the information is superior to the commonly gushy interior design style.

Although there is a section on contemporary versions of the classic Swedish styles, it remains primarily an homage to the original rather than an illustration of an inventive combination.

Nonetheless, an excellent reference book.