SEPTEMBER 2007 » book review

Northern Lights

Classical Swedish Architecture and Interiors: 1650-1840
by Johan Cederlund
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, NY; 2007
272 pp.; clothbound; 236 color illus.; $60
ISBN 978-0-393-73172-9

Reviewed by Eve M. Kahn

Sweden is graced with some of Europe's most consistent architecture. A low-key, sometimes austere, sometimes playful strain of Classicism runs through the nation's buildings. Too many recent coffee-table books, unfortunately, have focused on the simplicity and domestic quality of "Swedish style," presenting it as just another alternative for home décor. Classical Swedish Architecture and Interiors: 1650-1840, despite its deceptively fluffy-looking cover depicting a 1790s cream-colored salon with cupids sculpted on the ceiling, is anything but "lite." Dr. Johan Cederlund, a Swedish historian and curator, has produced a sweeping, lively, in-depth study. Ably translated by Lani Summerville-Sternerup (who runs an architecture-focused tour company, Classical Excursions), the text reveals how a dozen subtly different takes on Classicism have thrived on Swedish soil.

The basic harmony of Swedish architecture is particularly impressive considering how much political turmoil the country endured throughout the era that Cederlund analyzed – 1650 to 1840. He tells of kings and queens assassinated or forced to abdicate, misguided attempts to invade neighboring countries and constant wars with Russia. Whenever Swedish architects were not dutifully designing new military forts, or jockeying among themselves for commissions from the latest royal regime, they wrought a unique multicultural mixture of imported trends and patriotic local motifs.

Cederlund explains how Swedish architects and artisans collaborated with French, Dutch, German and Italian expatriates as the taste for Baroque segued into Rococo, Gustavian Neoclassicism and Empire Style fashions. He explores a wide range of building types, including palaces, schools, warehouses, theaters, hospitals and workers' housing. Historical precedents for Swedish floor plans, massing and ornament are meticulously documented, whether the Pantheon, Villa Rotonda, Palazzo Borghese or works by Le Nôtre and Mansart. The author even knows where Swedish armies plundered to obtain foreign paintings or sculptures, and which foreign pattern books, such as Charles-Etienne's 1728 Architecture moderne or Percier and Fontaine's 1810s Recueil de décorations intérieures, inspired Swedish details.

Royals and aristocrats in Sweden, perhaps to defy Scandinavian winters, were especially passionate Franco- and Italo-philes. They commissioned near-replicas of Versailles' Hall of Mirrors, muraled rooms with scenes of sunny Mediterranean landscapes and modeled pilasters after palm trees. They filled gardens with what English writer Mary Wollstonecraft described in the 1790s as "Venuses and Apollos condemned to lie in snow three parts of the year." The architectural patrons' goal, of course, was to emphasize Sweden's resemblance to the Roman Empire.

Yet amid the country's images of "deities and muses from antiquity," Cederlund observes, sculptors and painters would sometimes portray Swedish royals' "good deeds for the people and the kingdom," military triumphs, famous scientists and "scenes from Nordic mythology." Some quintessentially Swedish architectural features meanwhile emerged, including säteri roofs (a kind of hip on hip), birch paneling and whitewashed Protestant church interiors within Catholic-seeming domed and pedimented shells.

The author illustrates virtually everything he discusses with contemporary photographs. In fact, the survival rate of Swedish landmarks, often adapted into museums or government buildings, is astonishing; many have retained even their delicate trompe l'oeil pilasters or coffers and long-obsolete tiled stoves. (Numerous readers will no doubt be tempted to sign on for Classical Excursions' regular trips to Sweden.) The only virtues this book lacks are some text cross-references to the plates, a timeline of Swedish rulers and thumbnail biographies of major architects. Scholars will find this book invaluable, as will any designer looking for ways to adapt Classical traditions to cultures and climates far from the Mediterranean.

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