Thanks to my Instagram habit, I’m stopped in my tracks daily by the sets and still lifes that Scandinavian stylists create for clients like Iitalla and Asun.
Photography by Anna Pirkola.
Here s a perfect example Star Finnish interiors and prop stylist Anna Pirkola annapirkola moved with her family of four into a Helsinki duplex apartment with a kitchen she describes as just horrible and...
...dark brown Sticking to a budget of 3 000 approximately 3 400 she and her musician cultural manager husband entirely overhauled the kitchen themselves with occasional help from Anna s father and an electrician
“The fact that we were on a tight budget forced us to be more imaginative and to think through every option,” says Anna. The couple’s first move was attack the cabinets: They tore out the over-the-counter storage and left only the shell of the lower half.
The metal tab hardware on the cabinets is also from Ikea: “We weren’t sure if we wanted to have leather pulls or something else, so we bought these to use for the time being because they don’t leave any marks on the outside of the cabinets. And yes, they have been there quite a while.”
The ceramic coffee pot is Mette Duedahl’s Push design and the white ceramic teapot and sugar bowl are from Jonas Wagell’s Bulky Tea Collection, all from Muuto.
The biggest splurge, Anna tells us, was the vintage-style Smeg fridge.
The range hood also received a makeover: “It was full of different kinds of glass and metal things, so we just ripped everything off and were really curious to see what it would look like. First we thought of covering it with a plywood box, but somehow it looked quite interesting so we just painted it white.”
Gubi’s Ronde Pendant light of spun aluminum hangs over the table. Anna combined a set of Alvar Aalto’s Artek Aalto Chair 66 dining chairs from Artek with a vintage Thonet design.
The couple built a shallow sideboard from the same Ikea cabinetry that they hung on the kitchen wall.
Ikea bent metal shelving holds glassware.
Modular multi-height shelves by Lundia—”a really nice Finnish brand”—offer open and closed storage.