A trip to the motherland

No, not mine or Rob's, but the motherland of Scandinavian interior design.  The birth place of Ikea (almost).  The origin of the statement lamp.

We've been to Denmark.

This blog is not suitable for readers allergic to photos of lights, taps, chairs, or fish.

We didn't plan to visit Copenhagen for a slum-recon-design trip - we really didn't... if I'm honest, it has more to do with our obsession for Nordic Noir.  But only a few hours after arriving, I turned round to realise I'd lost Rob several blocks back.  I returned to find him staring into a shop window, hypnotised by this.

He made me return several times to stare in this window, repeatedly telling me to take better photos of this light.  Because it is a light, apparently, not an abstract, minimalist slinky.  Keep this (admittedly not brilliant) picture in mind people, more coming up later.

Now Denmark is the home of Poulsen.  Louis, that is, not Christian.  Mr Poulsen is the designer of these, the idea for which I suspect he came up with whilst bored at home with only a pack of post-it notes to entertain him:

And these, which can apparently be found in one in five Danish homes:

Very nice.

Less nice were some of the other lighting options we found in Denmark's answer to John Lewis - turns out the Danes have a taste for the wacky when it comes to lights; who doesn't want a light fitting complete with bird and random lettering?

Or one inspired by bacon?

Or a minimalist fire extinguisher?

This I thought was quite cool - a shattered light bulb:

Or this one, which was very pretty, but I'd be continually terrified of breathing too close to it and recreating the light fitting above:

This one looks like the love child of an Portuguese man o' war and one of those head massaging things:

This one has been the centrepiece to my nightmares:

And then Rob saw this one.  He really wants it.  Reckons it would fit right in with his animal print rugs in the Las Vegas style bachelor pad.  I didn't let him buy it.

But then we found THE ONE.  Rob is in love.  He spent a good half an hour staring dreamy eyed at this one, and now I can treat you to a decent photo:

Nice, yes?  And it's ok because:

So I'm just thrilled that we have sorted out our middle class, post-modern, arty-farty show off light fitting BEFORE WE HAVE ELECTRICITY OR WATER OR A FRONT DOOR.  Fab.

We don't have floors yet either, so obviously the next priority is chairs.  Yes, here we go again.  We were sweaty palmed on spotting this on day one:

And then failed to concentrate on the sightseeing  part of this holiday as we critiqued every chair we saw.  Here are the chairs in the Modern Art Museum:

Here are some more from the Danish Design Museum:

And here is Rob demonstrating that they work.  This model is, appropriately if you know Rob, called 'Nap'.

There were plenty more chairs in the Danish John Lewis we liked.  

And these ones, which come in exciting colours:

Turns out they'd also be quite easy to ship to the UK.

 I did promise some taps, so here they are, with a bonus handle picture for your pleasure:

We also found this.  It is fish leather.  That's leather, made of fish.  Yes, really.  

And finally, who knew that the rocking chicken was a Danish design classic?  In his chair-induced delirium, Rob was trying to convince me that we could install these in the slum instead of the lovely chairs you see above.  He even tried to convince me by promising that I could have them in colour, not plain white.  

 At least, I hope he was delirious... especially when he considered whether pictures of people with dough on their heads might be a fitting installation for the kitchen.

Even worse that he excitedly suggested that we could save valuable cash by recreating this ourselves.