Thursday 7 February 2008

new and old tile stoves






Photo top, middle Claes G. Svantesson, bottom Per Björn

Annika Svensson shows her tile stoves at Stockholm Furniture Fair. She creates both sculpted one-of-a-kind stoves and pieces like these, where the tiles are made in molds. Pretty and warmhearted, every little detail thought of. And functional.

Annika Svensson stoves
Slide show, how she makes them
Annika's ceramics

Tile stoves originally came to Sweden from mid Europe and Germany.
Here and here, and here
I love the stove type that is still common, that is like a huge warm body in the kitchen of country houses, with room to curl up and dry wet socks on.

We don't have them. Here the stoves were improved to be more efficient (because of the colder climate, or there would be no forests left in Sweden). The major ceramic manufacturers had a variety of both plain and simple as well as richly decorated stoves. The most exclusive stoves for mansions and castles came from Marieberg, so elegant and rare.

Keep warm!

11 comments:

j said...

such beautiful work! people always have the desire to make something beautiful- warm would be good enough, but people need beauty just as much.

(and a place to dry socks)

this is a good post for a February morning. :)

Bibbi, I was tagged to choose five bloggers who "make my day". I see you've already fulfilled this tag, but just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate your blog and all you share.

Andrea Tachezy said...

These stoves are perfect. We used to have one old on our weekendhous, but unfortunately it is broken. It is completely different warm from them, isn´t it?

mansuetude said...

These are so almost humanin stance and stature.
The doors especially, so detail and full of mystery, they make me want to make a story of entering into the inner warmth and wealth of what that door represents, all the way up into breathing.

Bibbi said...

I'm glad you like them too!

Thankyou for the appreciation, J!

Andrea, I hope you can fix your stove!

Mansuetude, I think you have so many wonderful stories!

Olha Pryymak said...

beautiful stuff. I am just building (well, getting the workers to build it for me) a stove. These days they make them with fireproof glass doors, so you can get fireplace-looking thing, but ten times more efficient; and decorated with some beautiful tiles. here in Ukraine we have factories left from Austro-Hungarian empire times producing beautiful tile, Anyway, thanks for great inspiration idea!

mansuetude said...

bibbi, thanks for your fire story ...it made me a wee-bit emotional! We both have "fire" stories and you have actual firestoves to contain them ...a nice interesting warmth in that coincidence. :)

Alexandra Hedberg said...

underbart vackra. Kakelugnar är på nåt sätt romantiska.

gill said...

Beautiful!

Lylou said...

it is things like these that make me miss the cold weather...although yesterday it was cold for us and wet.

Katherine Dunn/Apifera Farm said...

The green one - I am swooning - beautiful.

Anonymous said...

Sooo gorgeous!