Ingmar Bergman's note-scrawled cabinet

Which is what my laptop is looking like, with the daily scribblings of our new usernames and passwords.

Thanks a lot, hacker.

Aside from that, Bergman's estate was put on the block in 2009 by the Swedish auction house Bukowskis. Going through the catalog you can see what a well-heeled Scandinavian house should be furnished with. Not just the obvious designers- and actually there was no Aalto- but lesser known Nordic furniture makers and craftsmen, most everything in shades of wood and white.

Two favorites:
One of two Bruno Mathsson Pernilla 69 lounge chairs:

and a 1960's glass sculpture by Goran Waarf for Kosta.


Definitely check out the catalog, and the rest of Bukowskis back catalogs. The photos get incredibly huge (for the absentee bidders) so it's an excellent resource for your reference libraries.

Ingmar Bergman's estate at Bukowskis

Wood Play

From the book "Modern Finnish Sculpture" (1970) by Goran Schildt:

"During the period between 1927 and 1954, especially in the 1930's, Aalto engaged in a series of what might be described as artistic laboratory experiments, making many of the abstract reliefs and free sculptures in which he studied the variations in pliancy of wood fibres."...

" Alvar Aalto himself explains his early experiments in sculpture by referring to Yrjö Hirn. In spite of an age difference of nearly thirty years there was a warm friendship between Hirn, the distinguished and influential Professor of Aesthetics, and Aalto, who was deeply influenced by Hirn's comments on the significance of play in aesthetic creation. It is only by forgetting practical purposes in order to subordinate himself to the inner logic of his material that the artist can raise himself from the established pattern to free creation, inspired by spontaneous joy and delight in play. Aalto's "motiveless" experiments with laminated wood, aimed solely at facing problems of form and of aesthetic effect, in which the wood was bent, split, and fixed in different positions according to its grain, were acclaimed as the first wholly abstract Finnish sculpture."


Above: Alvar Aalto, various wood reliefs/experiments, 1929- 1966
Top: A fountain of Aalto chair legs from Wary Meyers' Tossed & Found. (no presumptions or pretense- our project was only about how to make the white plinth below it...)

related:

Aalto, Rya

Yard sale finds from the weekend: above, a giant, beautiful, and slightly sea-air musty 8'x10' Danish Rya rug from the 60's, a pop lightbulb lamp and an Alvar Aalto shelf.

Below, the shelf and a pair of heavy steel Alessio Tasca bookends, from another yard sale.

Distressed Finnish

Aalice Cooper Alvar Aalto Maash Üpp, from the pages of 

Wary Meyers' Tossed & Found

Kachelofen

West German WESO ceramic tile stove, from a yard sale. When we finally got it's 440 pounds home and tried to bring it upstairs it crushed the first step, so the next 15 were not in the cards. But when we do finally install it it's going to heat our whole chalet, and we can even cook on it! (see pic). 

Aalvabet

from the type on pgs 34-35 of Tossed & Found

Waal Aart

Alvar Aalto table and chairs, $40, originally bought in the 70's from Placewares in Boston. To find them at a yard sale was definitely a windfall, even though we have nowhere to put them right now. But the legs and backs easily unscrew, and there are plenty of them, so we could make a wall installation like the one at the Aalto Museum in Finland (below). However, it might be fun to use just the seats and top, in the shape of a giant kitty paw (see also)

(bottom photo by ettubrute)