An Historical Oxymoron, or Right Era, Wrong Country.
My mother made this tiled stove and painted it to match the motif in the toile wallpaper. Toile is a French creation from the mid eighteenth century that the British adored. Tiled warming stoves were invented in Sweden in 1767 and were used throughout Scandinavia. The British and the American colonies did not use tiled stoves in the eighteenth century. Since it’s pretty, and the motif is not Scandinavian, I’ll leave it here in the yellow bedroom.
To see beautiful examples of tiled stoves in person, visit the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis. To see more miniature tiled stoves, find the “A Miniature Carl Larsson Christmas” series on my blog.
Update, 8/8/2024. I found a well-annotated book that served as inspiration for my mother’s work. Creating the Look: Swedish Style by Katrin Cargill (Pantheon Books, 1986), contains a stove similar to this one on page sixteen, designed in the Gustavian style of King Gustav III, who ruled Sweden from 1771 to 1792.