Ilse Crawford of Studioilse has converted a 100-year-old house in Stockholm into a boutique hotel filled with richly coloured wood, leather and velvet (+ slideshow).
First built in 1910, Ett Hem was originally home to a government official and his wife, who gave the building an arts and craft style with timber-panelled walls and decorative ceilings.
Studioilse‘s renovation includes a series of communal rooms where guests are encouraged to relax in each other’s company. These areas centre around a kitchen, containing large dining tables and an assortment of seating areas.
Other rooms include a library with bookshelves stretching up to the ceiling, plus a glazed conservatory where guests can choose to sit for breakfast or dinner.
“The idea is a comfortable cultured house you can enjoy as if it is a friend’s,” said Ilse Crawford. “Sit in the kitchen, have a drink in the sitting room, pick up a book in the library or snuggle down by the fireplace.”
She added: “We hope that people who travel a lot will feel so happy there they wouldn’t want to stay anywhere else.”
There are six guest suites, five double bedrooms and one duplex suite on offer at the hotel. Each room comes with a mixture of vintage and modern furniture pieces, as well as a brass cocktail cabinet.
Art and photography decorates the walls in each room and a few of Crawford’s own furniture designs are also included.
London designer Ilse Crawford spent nine years leading interiors magazine British Elle Decoration before launching her own London studio. Her best-known projects include interiors at Shoreditch House in London and Grand Hotel in Stockholm.
See more stories about Ilse Crawford, including an interview we filmed about her studio and work.
Photography is by Magnus Mårding.
Here’s some more information from Ett Hem:
The Ongoing Story of Ett Hem
Built in the first years of the twentieth century, this building was home to a government official and his wife, a lady with a love for the aesthetics of Karin Larsson, who collected objects, textiles and furniture from all over Sweden. This was a time when the home became the focus of art and life, and design was integrated into the everyday. The influence of the Arts & Crafts, the romantic notion of national character and the delight in the design of useful things, combined with an impulse to embed a family in a place through architecture. All together this created a very special moment for domestic architecture in Sweden.
Ett Hem, built in 1910, dates from this moment. The house in Sköldungagatan was designed by architect Fredrik Dahlberg. With its protective brick shell it weaves a coat against the harsh Swedish winter. In its interiors it has both the robust, dark-timber-lined rooms of public life, the masculine realms. And the feminine realm of the private. Upstairs the house evokes the summery whiteness and lightness of Carl Larsson’s super Scandinavian interiors, feminine family spaces suffused with sun. Ett Hem has always been a container of beautiful things, the finest furniture, antiques and design. Today its spaces are inhabited not only by guests but by objects and art with real stories and histories, things that frame moments in a life.
Like all the best Scandinavian hosts, Ett Hem is at home indoors and outdoors. The courtyard garden, a secret city wilderness, is a room every bit as important as the interiors, a place for relaxation and conversation, for a chilled bottle of wine or a steaming hot coffee. Personal touches are as important as the design in defining the everyday experience.
The Life of the House
Ett Hem is not the usual hotel. If Ett Hem is an idea of home, of comfort and security, of familiarity, the other is an institution, a series of services. Ett Hem is something very different. It is active, where the guests can subtly shift the conditions, the atmospheres, the conviviality. A hotel is passive, a place that exists with or without you.
While it has all the facilities expected today, Ett Hem is a place that allows the guest to become part of it. Guests are treated as friends of the family. They can turn on the television in the sitting room, borrow our car or take the dog for a walk. They can make themselves at home, help themselves from the fridge. The food changes with the seasons, the rooms warm up with stoves and cool down with a fresh breeze from an open window. Ett Hem is connected to the street and the sky, to the city, it is not a machine cut off from life outside. Ett Hem is as glamorous as it is casual, but while it is a luxury, it is not a luxury hotel.
The Experience of the Place
The value of Ett Hem comes through the pleasure of proximity to beautiful things, of being in spaces that tell a story, and through an ethic of generosity and care. And to a degree, of being left alone to live in a very special house. This from the moment you step through the college door, enter the courtyard into the garden and go up the steps to the front door. In the entrance hall a fire is lit when it’s cold outside, and fresh cut flowers from the garden are arranged on the table. Check in and wait for friends by the fire. Ett Hem will feel familiar. It is a place to use as you please. Downstairs in the sitting room there are sofas to sink into and games to play. The library, a room to disappear into, is stacked high with books you actually want to read. And the leafy glass house, where you can take breakfast during the day, or where you can enjoy a twinkling feast at night. Upstairs the bedrooms have a warm domestic feel with a sophisticated edit of vintage and new pieces in tactile materials such as cane, wood, leather and velvet. Each room has its own cocktail cabinet in gleaming brass. And throughout the house is the owners’ personal collection of art and photography. At the heart of it all is the kitchen. Furnished with a big table, comfy chairs and settles. It is a place to really feel at home. On open shelves everything is at hand. A generous fridge is full to the brim with tasty treats, healthy food, champagne and fine wine, yours to help yourself. A house guest is both privileged and respected. Privileged to be party to an intimate private realm and respected as an honoured invitee.
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