Swedish Tiled Stoves
Tiled stoves were common in Scandinavia beginning in the eighteenth century.
The green stove is hallmarked “NF,” and is by an artist who made miniature copies of all the tiled stoves in the American Swedish Institute. “NF” might be Nancy Farrier, but I’m still digging through my mother’s hand-written notes to verify that.
The white tile stove with a yellow floral border was built and painted by my mother.
The blue wall cabinet apparently went on gallery display upside down, as shown in the photo. When I pulled it from the wall and removed the wax, I found the signature of Ruth Pollack, a well-known twentieth century miniature maker. See the wall cabinet in more detail in the post Painted Furniture.
Photos by Karen Nyenhuis.
For the next post in the series, click here — Painted Furniture
An Historical Oxymoron – Right Era, Wrong Country
My mother made this tiled stove and painted it to match the motif in the toile wallpaper in her miniature American colonial house. 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, so this stove should not be in an American colonial house.
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 photo of 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.
To view the Colonial House, click here – Painted Motifs
