The Swenglish Home

A plastered Swede...

And so it was that there was a rushed Swede on a fly-by visit to Stockholm in September 2007. The Casa Cor exhibition had just started and I had about 15 minutes to spare. With ca 40 architects and interior designers having created a wild and wacky home for an imaginary family, those 15 minutes were going to be jam-packed with impressions and inspiration, and I did not intend to miss a thing.

In one room hung some art work that caught my eye and made me think, like so often when I see something I can't afford, " What if I could try to make that myself?"

And so it was that a stubborn Swede returned to the UK carrying a baby in arms, whilst ushering a three-year-old along, pushing a pram and pulling a suitcase... and carrying two big buckets of Swedish plaster ("spackel"). After having searched everywhere in vain for English plaster behaving like the Swedish grainy, sandy kind, and refusing to give up on my experiment, this seemed a very natural solution to me. Needless to say, some other family members expressed some concern about my sanity and were quietly mocking my madness.

As much as I loathe working with MDF, this seemed like the best material for the square and the circle, which were then screwed together and covered in a thick layer of plaster. With the back end of an art paint brush, I made the lines to give it the texture I had in mind, and painted it with a matt gold and matt blackboard paint. As I did not have a picture of the art work that had inspired me, I had to try to recreate it from memory.

The result? A round golden wallthingamajig that seems to work rather well in our Oriental-inspired bedroom. Mocking family members mock no longer.

So, did it in the end ressemble the real deal? The picture to the left below is from Casa Cor. Conclusion: Same, same, but different.

Photo from a blog called "Living in Andyland".