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INTERIOR | BLEND OF ART AND OWN CREATIONS

Steal the style!

CLASSIC

Tommaso starts from a well-functioning base and decorates the home with design classics and traditional furniture such as the grand

piano.

COLOR

Do not fear splashes of color. Tommaso makes his home stand out and become personal by adding bright shades of yellow, red and green.

RICH IN DETAIL

Many paintings, meter after meter of well-filled bookshelves and characterful items in every corner. Tommaso's home never gets boring

as it is full of things to look at. 1. Mirror, SEK 6,395, Gubi. 2. Table Pli, SEK 74,490, ClassiCon/Nordiska Galleriet. 3. Lithograph, Persona II, SEK 4,800, Ed Art. 4. Lamp, price on request, Alexander Lervik for Saas Instruments. 5. Cowhide, Koldby, SEK 1,495, Ikea. 6. Daybed, Grid, SEK 9,496, Petite Friture. 7. Grand piano, SEK 158,768, Yamaha. 8. Armchair Marc Krusin Side Chair, SEK 8,250, Knoll/Nordiska Galleriet.

78 RUM HEMMA NO 03 2018

Award-winning form. The Tingest exercise collection was recently named Home Gadget of the Year. Alexander designed, among other things, the marble dumbbells, which he also uses himself.

Alexander Lervik

Occupation: Designer, founder of Alexander Lervik Designstudio and Tingest. Lives: Stockholm.

Age: 45 years.

Instagram: i huvudet alexander_lervik Website: lervik.se and tingest.se

Behind the facade

Alexander Lervik

Alexander Lervik has a packed spring ahead of him. New products are to be launched. And in April, I Huvudet På Alexander Lervik, Designer opens - this year's major design exhibition at Kulturhuset Stadsteatern. In addition, he is celebrating 20 years as a designer. And is recognized by Rum Hemma.

TEXT EMELIE STROMFORS PHOTO BRENDAN AUSTIN

Tingest exercise equipment is Home Gadget of the Year 2017!

—Yes, it's completely fantastic. I was overjoyed when I heard it.

How did your design journey actually begin?

— I grew up halfway between art and engineering, one could say. My mother and her husband were artists and dad and his wife were engineers. As a graduation project in upper secondary school, I chose to make a bookshelf, sawed apart an Ikea shelf and built my own version. So it started back then. I began the design program at Beckmans and before the graduation project in 1998, I asked myself how I would stand out among all the graduating students. I decided to do the project Ten Stools — Ten Decades, a design history retrospective where I designed a stool for each decade of the 20th century. That exhibition traveled around the world for six years, had over a million visitors and became my way into the industry.

Light has become a recurring theme in your design, tell us about your relationship?

— It started out of anxiety that I had at the end of the 90s. I found the darkness in Sweden extremely difficult, and already on Midsummer morning I got a knot in my stomach from the knowledge that now we are heading toward the dark. Somewhere around there I was stricken by a light madness. No, but I became completely fascinated by the thought of what more could be done with light. The door handle Brighthandle was a direct result of that and was followed up by the light swing Light Swing. It is actually only in the last five years that I have started making fixtures, before that there was a great deal of play and experimentation with how light is used.

Does the fact that you have started making light fixtures mean that you have found the answer to how light is used?

— No, I haven't. There is always room to develop there, it feels like. It's more that as my career has moved upward, I have realized that now I should also make products that go out into homes, that it isn't only the experimental like in the chocolate lamp Poetry of light. Even though I feel that that part, the artistic side where I play and experiment, is actually the most important. What I do there pays off even in other, purely commercial, objects when I work with them. I look at light from another angle, it feels like.

What would you say is good design?

— That I would say is up to the viewer to decide. That life experiences tell whether it is good or bad design. What I consider beautiful design, someone else might find ugly, and vice versa.

CURRENT

New and older design. The lamp Tricolour is a spring novelty for Ateljé Lyktan. The chair Red Chair was produced in a limited edition in 2005. Below: The light swing immortalized in the book Scandinavian Light Senses.

"THAT I HAVE ACTUALLY BEEN DOING THIS FOR SO LONG THAT I CAN HAVE A RETROSPECTIVE ALSO FEELS ... SPECIAL"

And if you get to decide?

— Then it is products where people have thought things through and gone the whole way. The PH lamp is such an example where a rigorous investigation was made to see how light behaves, and out of that observation an extraordinarily beautiful form emerged. You have an exhibition coming up this year?

—Yes, it is a completely fantastic privilege to get to exhibit in that way, at Kulturhuset right on Sergels Torg. Although there are slightly mixed feelings, that I have actually been doing this for so long that I can have a retrospective also feels ... special. But mostly completely fantastic fun.

There we get to see your entire production but also get to know some of your personality traits, is it important to be personal as a designer?

— For me, it is important to be personal. Life affects you so much, I think, in what you create, so the products turn out like how you live. Now I am going down to work with the anxiety at the glassworks in Småland. It will be fun to see if I can visualize it in the right way.

RUM HEMMA NO 03 2018

English translation of the original article. Text read from the scanned original; small transcription errors may occur.