Swedish and French Furniture

An English Tudor house with a country feel was transformed into a Swedish style home by interior designers Carol Glasser and Katrin Cargill. Enfilades [room-to-room views] are a hallmark of Swedish style, and a number of doors on the ground floor were taken out to create one. Interior shutters that tuck in to the window reveals were added, and wide Canadian pine-plank flooring with a chalky limed finish.
Let's step in.



The designers had an artist hand-color and glaze 18th-century black-and-white Dutch engravings for the sunroom; eleven are originals, the balance photocopies that are all but indistinguishable from the real thing. Both chairs and table are Swedish antiques.


Various vantage points in the family room, where an alderwood pedestal table separates dressed-up and dressed-down seating areas, one with a delicate Swedish painted sofa, the other (where the children watch TV) with a sprawling Charles sectional. Painted rustic planks on the walls.


Antiques with their original paint — a French Directoire mantel and overmantel and Swedish tea table and armchair.


No Swedish house is complete without a longcase clock.


These dining chairs are a reproduction of Swedish furniture.


Gustavian armchair and Swedish dropleaf table in the breakfast room.


Rather than hanging heavy cabinets on the kitchen's window wall, Cargill and Glasser designed plate racks to display part of a collection of French faience. Deployed throughout the house, the roller shade is a traditional Swedish design. Charles Edwards tole pendant lamp with a nickel lining.


The Viking range has a graphite finish.


Nordic Style is one of Cargill and Glasser's favorite resources for Swedish lighting (the glass urn lamps), furniture (the painted chests, pressed into service as night tables), and fabrics (the Raspberry Small Check on the bench, and 19th-century bed in the Louis XVI taste). Scrubbed with liming paste, extra-wide Canadian pine floor planks are partially covered with flat-weave wool rugs.


All images and information from House Beautiful.