Shopping Fatigue

I would never have thougth that this could happen to me, but I believe I have actually reached a state of shopping fatigue... having dutifully shopped my bank cards into oblivion for the past 15 years I suddenly feel weary at the prospect of aquiring more things. It's clearly time to slow down and enjoy what is already in my possession.

It hit me when I did my day trip to IKEA a couple of weeks ago. Normally I would struggle to hold back when I go there, but this time I kept leaning into my trolley to ditch items I had picked up earlier. I'd set off with a list of things I was sure I would want to buy, but in the end I just didn't.

Like this bamboo chair...

 Photo: IKEA

I found it, it had been reduced to a ridiculous £35, it was comfortable and it looked good. But as I sat in it I realised that while I had imagined placing it in the bay window of our bedroom it was highly unlikely that I would ever sit and read in it - I'm far too happy snuggling up in bed with my book of the moment. The chair would simply end up as a repository for clothes, a chairdrobe. Was I going to haul it home on the Wimbledon tram just to for that? No. Ditto most of the other things I'd lined up.

One thing I did bring back was a pair of nifty little bendable clip-on LED lights called Jansjö. They were a snip at £10 each and clip on to the headboard on the bed in our guest room. Having had to plaster and repaint the walls in this room we have really not been keen to drill holes in them so the giant clothes-pegs on these lights are perfect. And they are great for reading :)

Photo: Nordic Soul

Photo: Nordic Soul

Shortlisted Pendant Lights

In the search for hallway lighting I have at least determined what I do not like among the vaster than vast range available today... Such as stripped-back versions which look as if someone has ripped the fabric off the shade and left the framework exposed like a cage. Hm.. naked bulb: no. Ripped up lampshade: no thanks. Then there is anything with intricate detail which will inevitably gather lots of dust. I am not a cleaning fanatic, but I do have an inner dust-gremlin which hates the idea of adding dust-prone areas.

So I think I'm down to two main groups of pendant lights:

Metal lampshades in either black or copper/brass/bronze on an old-style flex. I like the combination of Bestlite's matt black shade with a little brass detailing around the top.

Bestlite BL9-M Black & Brass. Available from David Village Lighting at £220.15

 

 Dokka black by Northern Lighting available from The Lollipop Shoppe at £176

I also like a 'vintaged', or perhaps I should call it 'slightly abused' brass shade - tarnished rather than shiny (tarnished brass has a beautiful colour).

Brooklyn brass-coloured metal pendant with pewter fixture from Industville at £69

 And then the combination of the two, which would be a matt black shade with a brushed golden inside (Tom Dixon's designs are great, but his lamps are everywhere now).

Oslo pendant light (haha, I didn't know there were so many lamps named after my home town!)

Pitted against the above is the concept of the slightly coloured glass shade (clear glass looks beautiful in photos but the brightness would look cold in our chalky white hallway).

Goal small pendant light in recycled glass by House Doctor. £24 from Idyll Home

Fog pendant light by Front for Zero lighting. Sadly unaffordable. £540 from Viaduct

Amp pendant lights by Normann Copenhagen available from The Lollipop Shoppe at £90.

Ellipse and Circle grey mirror-effect pendant lights by House Doctor (ever so slightly reminiscent of Normann Copenhagen...) £110 each from Idyll Home

Mid-century glass pendant light with copper bulb fitting, spotted in Heal's. Ca £140

Birger Dahl - Rediscovered

In my search for hallway lighting I also remembered a quietly elegant number which I had glimpsed in the Norwegian press last year. It is one of two lamps designed by interior-architect and industrial designer Birger Dahl in the 1950's. Dahl was a representative of 'Scandinavian Design' , a Nordic modernist ethos where design focused on the needs of ordinary people instead of a small moneyed elite. Dahl's two best known lamp designs, 'Dokka' ('the doll') and 'Jenta' ('the girl') were exhibited at the large travelling exhibition 'Design in Scandinavia' which toured the US and Canada in 1954-57 and which was pivotal in introducing Scandinavian/Nordic design to North America. 'Dokka' was awarded the golden medal at the Milan Triennale 1954.

Photo: Northern Lighting

 

Photo: Northern Lighting

 

Photo: Northern Lighting

Photo: e-mag DECO

Dokka is now manufactured by Northern Lighting and is available to buy in the UK at Holloways of Ludlow.

Elle Decoration Sweden - Lamp of the Year

Elle Decoration Sweden has awarded Swedisgh design group Front's 'Fog' lamp for Zero Lighting 'Lamp of the Year'. This simple and elegant pendant light is reminiscent of a softly glowing planet, with a sandblasted finish on the inside of the glass globe which graduates from cloudy at the bottom to clear at the top. It is available with a white, black or brass fitting and a white or black flex.

Sublime.

Photo: Knut Koivisto

Photo: Zero Lighting

IKEA and WIS Design present a new collection of lampshades

In my search for hallway lighting options I have just spotted a beautiful new range of lampshades on IKEA's 'Livet Hemma' blog. The collection is by Stockholm design studio WIS and features vintage-influenced shades in stencil-cut steel, with a white powder-coated surface and copper inside. The matte white colour appeals to my nordic fondness for neutrals, and the copper inner provides warmth and interest both when the light is on and off. I think our mid-century house would be very happy with these...

'Överud' consists of lamelles with a botanical stencilled pattern in a rounded globe shape, while 'Nymö' is a classic cylinder with a chevron (or to my eye lots and lots of mountain tops) design. The collection will be available from IKEA stores in February.

Överud lampshade by WIS Design for IKEA

Nymö lampshade by WIS Design for IKEA

All photos by IKEA

Hallway Lighting - The Balance Between Esthetics and Practicality

Having had our hallway and staircase up two floors redecorated it's time to focus on the lighting. We need a ceiling light for the hallway and the 1st floor landing. The 2nd floor has recessed spotlights, so we don't have to think about it - and a good thing it is too, as the ceiling up there is really high and inaccessible.

I'm wondering whether I should try to find a light that will suit both the hallway and the upstairs landing, but the two areas have quite different needs, so I'm not sure it would be the best solution. The ground floor of our house has a slightly lower ceiling than upstairs, and the hallway light hangs at the bottom of the stairs, so I'm dithering between a pendant light and a flush ceiling light. From a practical point of view the latter would probably work rather well, since the ceiling fixture is positioned more or less at the bottom of the stairs and a pendant lamp feels as if it hangs right in front of you as you come down the stairs. We also have a glass-panelled door leading in to the sitting room to the side of the stairs and the brightness of the light shining through the door is a bit unnerving when you are sitting there in cosy mood lighting. However, it is not easy to find an attractive ceiling light, there seems to be a very narrow selection available - mostly an inverted glass dome set in a rim of chrome or other metal. Jim Lawrence, the Suffolk firm, makes beautiful lamps and I know from experience that the quality and service is excellent. But I don't think we want to go as traditional as these...

 Left to right: Jim Lawrence 'Tavistock', 'Gladstone' and 'Grosvenor'

From an esthetic point of view there is lots to chose from. I am quite taken with a style of retro pendant light where the lightshade is transparent glass, with an old-fashioned flex and a brass or bronze rose. These look beautiful with a filament bulb showing through the glass. However, two of my family members have trouble with their eyesight and therefore find naked lightbulbs very uncomfortable to the eye. I wouldn't want them to have to shade their eyes when they come to visit. And again, there is that glass panelled door into the sitting room - this kind of lighting would probably be quite unnerving viewed from the sofa...

The middle road, and easier to find, would be to opt for a semi-translucent or opaque lightshade on a pendant light. Porcelain, frosted glass or metal.

                                                           Bestlite pendant lights

 Left to right: Flos 'Mini Glo' pendant light, Gregg ovoid pendant light

'Leoni' pendant glass light

'Lumière' ceiling light

Louis Poulsen 'Aeros' suspension light

Norm Architects pendant light

Marset 'Hazy Day' frosted glass suspension light

Tom Dixon 'Cell' Short brass pendant light

Make your own Advent Star

Just spotted on Ida's Swedish blog at Sköna Hem, the most divine advent star:

Photo: Byggfabriken

From Swedish hardware/ironmonger Byggfabriken, a fount of beautiful period details for the home. If you click on the link you will even be able to read about the origins of the advent star tradition.

Lighting up the dark with lanterns

One of the many things I would like to do to our house is change the security sensor-light by our front door for a proper good looking outdoor light which can stay on all night. I don't like to walk up to a house in complete darkness, it's not very welcoming at all.

As we have many many things to fix, decorate and repair, the light by the front door will have to wait. In the mean time I'm thinking of placing a lantern either side of the door, lit by fake candles which can be set to switch on with a timer.

My search for lanterns has thrown up a plethora of great designs:

Stainless steel lantern in various sizes by Lama

 

'Iris' lantern by Indiska - shipping to the UK available

'Cubix' lantern by House Doctor - available from Royal Design UK

'Design with Light' glass lanterns with full-grain leather handles by Holmegaard. They come in clear or frosted glass, in various sizes. Available from Scandi Interiors, who offer free delivery to mainland UK

'Urbania' lanterns in white porcelain by Kähler - free delivery in the UK until Christmas

Lantern with an image of running reindeer by Lama

Beautiful porcelain votives by the Norwegian artist Ann Kristin Einarsen

 

Lanterns with hand-crocheted covers by Inghild, who sells these in her shop Epla

 

Lanterns by Tine K Home

And finally..

The London Collection votives designed by Lara Bohinc for Skultuna. Free delivery in the UK from LuxDeco

Finding your Advent Star

Tomorrow many of us from the Nordic countries will ceremonially hang our advent stars in a window and switch them on as darkness falls. Advent stars have been decorating our homes for around 100 years, and to most of us December wouldn't feel the same without one. The trick is to find one when you live abroad. Paper stars are readily available here in the UK, but not with integral lighting. My husband and I found our star in a lighting shop in Norway a number of years ago. It is made of twigs painted in gold and has tiny lights running through it. All we need to do to install it is sling it over the curtain rail, position it in the middle of the window, and plug it in. And of course, we need an adaptor.

Last year I decided to get a white paper star as well, and found a beautiful large pleated one. No light of course. I asked in lots of electrical shops if they would sell me a bulb on an electric lead, with no joy. But then I spotted a really corny ad on television (I thought IKEA must have decided to be ironic, it was so cheesy) and I realised that Swedish ironmonger/vendor of all sorts, Clas Ohlson, had launched here in the UK. Bingo. Ordered the bulb-holding electric lead with UK plug and received it in no time. Even spoke to a fellow Norwegian at their call centre to correct my order details. White pleated paper star with light ready to go. Please do note that you must use a low watt bulb inside a paper star. 20 or 30 watts at most, otherwise the paper could end up catching fire.

If you haven't found your advent star yet you can get one in store from IKEA , in store or on-line from Clas Ohlson, or from independent shop Scandiliving, for example. The online designer retailer Royal Design has a substantial selection by House Doctor, Georg Jensen, Watt & Veke and SMD Design, but bear in mind that they ship from Sweden so it takes around 7 working days to receive items.

Photo: Watt & Veke, available from Royal Design UK