Serene and sophisticated

Designers opt for understated elegance at French country estate.

By Deborah Donovan, Daily Herald Homes Writer

Elegant, serene and monochromatic describe the master sitting room designed by Annika Christensen of Midnight Sun in Libertyville.

But those words and even the color scheme – white and platinum – also apply to other rooms in the French country estate that is the 2007 Lake Forest Showhouse & Gardens.  The Infant Welfare Society of Chicago event will be open through May 20.

“Gustavus III in the 1700s went to France and fell in love with French style and brought it back to Sweden,” said Christensen, explaining how her room fits the home so well.

The three buildings constructed as a summer retreat in 1929 for an heir of the Swift meat-packing family cozy up to the Onwentsia Club.

Christensen melds her Scandinavian antiques – a classic painted white tall clock, a pair of bergere chairs and what is called a bathtub sofa because its wood-trimmed arms curve gently in to form a protective feel – with the very contemporary.

Modern touches include an oval Lucite coffee table and a Noguchi floor lamp with an angled white paper shade.

The painting that Christensen herself convinced Swedish artist Lennart Hall to sell introduces a square of orange, which the designer repeats with flowers.

The platinum linen wrapping the sofa and chairs is new, too.  And the timeless white Flokati shag rug is perfect for a space off the bedroom.

That’s gray grasscloth on the sitting room’s walls.  You will also see a lot of grasscloth and fabric on the walls in this home.

White is often used by the 32 designers who decorated the showcase home – sometimes with blues replacing Christensen’s platinum.

“The soft blues and creamy whites in the house are of our time, but they are soothing and fitting to the house,” she said.
 

Sunday, April 29, 2007 Daily Herald Home & Garden News Paper

The Master Sitting Room

A Whimsical Swedish touch is just what every French country-style estate needs.  And who better to provide it than Swedish-born Annika Christensen, who moved to the U.S. some 17 years ago and who for the past five years has been stocking her Libertyville shop, Midnight Sun Antiques, with containers full of Gustavian pieces imported directly from her motherland?  “Gustav the Third traveled to France in the 1700s and fell in love with the style,” she explains.  “He brought it back to Sweden with him, but because the country was not as wealthy as France, the style got simplified.  Painted maple, birch, and pine replaced the cherry and mahogany.”  The favored palette of the time was “creamy and grayish,” the same neutral scheme Christensen chose for her room.  She used textures, including wool (the fluffy Flokati rug), linen (on the carved-rose-motif 1850s Swedish bergere chairs), and grasscloth (on the walls) as her “colors.”  A glass and aluminum round side table designed by Warren Platner and a Lucite table from Todd Hase (not shown) add that bit of “tension between contemporary and old” that Christensen loves.  As for the quirky grandfather clock, well, that is both timeless and quintessentially Swedish.

September / October 2007 Chicago Home & Garden Magazine

Swedish Interiors - Rhonda Eleish & Edit Van Breems
With forewords by Albert Hadley and Miguel Flores - Vianna

Reference Guide

Mid-West

Midnight Sun Antiques
110 West Lake Street
Libertyville, IL 60048

Phone: 847-362-5240
www.midnightsunantiques.com

Swedish antiques and vintage furniture.