Steam on the Window: 10 Nordic Pieces for the Bath Hour
November is when the bathroom becomes the warmest room in the house. Ten Nordic pieces for the long bath, in stock across all four regions.
Read More →Warm to the Hand: 10 Nordic Wood Pieces for Winter
From the first week of November the house runs on lamplight. The window stops supplying the room and starts reflecting it, and under a bulb every material is re-sorted. Steel goes blue. Glass goes black at the edges. Wood moves the other way: oil and grain catch a warm light and hold it, and the piece stays the temperature of the room rather than of the air outside it.
That is the case for buying a few wooden things now rather than in May. Not furniture, which is another budget entirely, but the small objects that live in the hand: boards, spoons, pegs, a tray, a candlestick, something carved that does no work at all. Here are ten from Nordic makers, in oiled oak, birch, maple, walnut and moulded plywood, all in stock in the UK, Germany, Norway and Denmark and all worth comparing across the shops on ScandiDeals.
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1. Design House Stockholm Bridge – A Round Tray On Feet
Most trays sit flat and have to be prised off the table. The Design House Stockholm Bridge tray stands clear of the table on short cut feet, so there is always a gap for your fingers, and a lip deep enough to stop a cup walking off in a doorway. It is 42 centimetres across in oak, large enough for two mugs, a teapot and the biscuits without anything touching, and left on a low table it reads as a surface in its own right.
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2. Tell Me More Levi – Oiled Oak, Hole For A Thumb
A small board that stays out on the worktop earns its keep in a way a large one in a cupboard never does. The Tell Me More Levi board in oiled oak is the size for a lemon, a wedge of cheese, the heel of a loaf, with a ring cut into the handle so it can hang where you work. Oiled oak wants wiping rather than soaking, and a coat of oil two or three times a year. Do that and it outlasts every plastic board you have thrown away.
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3. Markus Aujalay Nils – Long Enough For The Steam
Winter cooking means standing over a pot for a while. The Nils wooden spoon is 32 centimetres of acacia, which keeps your knuckles clear of the rim and your hand out of the steam. Wood does not conduct heat up the handle, does not scratch a cast-iron pot, and makes no noise against the sides. The bowl is cut at an angle, so it reaches the corner where a round spoon leaves things to catch.
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4. Fiskars Norden – Steel Blade, Birch Handle
The wood here is only the handle, which is the part you actually hold. The Fiskars Norden coarse grater is a long stainless rasp with a turned birch grip, Finnish, and built for the vegetables of this time of year: celeriac, carrot, hard cheese over a baked dish. A metal handle on a tool like this is cold and slippery with wet hands; birch warms up and gives you something to grip.
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5. ERNST Candlestick – A Turned Stick, One Taper
Brass is the usual answer for a candle in a Nordic house, and brass is bright. The ERNST wooden candlestick is the quiet alternative: 25 centimetres of pale turned wood on a shallow disc of a foot, holding a single taper well above the table. Flame against unfinished wood is a softer picture than flame against metal. On a dining table in December it does the work without competing with the food or the glasses.
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6. Kay Bojesen Horse – Carved, And Doing Nothing
Every so often a house needs an object with no function at all. The Kay Bojesen horse in walnut belongs to the family of carved Danish animals that have stood on shelves for generations: a short solid body, four straight legs, a tilted head and a thin dark bridle. Walnut gives it a deep brown grain that reads almost black in lamplight. Children treat it as a toy and adults as a sculpture, and it survives both, which is why it is the piece here most likely to be handed on.
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7. MOEBE Frame A4 – Thin Oak, One Cord
Dark afternoons make bare walls more obvious. The MOEBE Frame in A4 oak is about as little frame as a picture can have: four slim lengths of oak, no mount board, and a black cord between the top corners so it hangs from one nail. The print sits right up against the wood, which suits a photograph or a pencil drawing better than a wide white border does. Hang two or three in a row at eye height rather than one on its own.
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8. Iris Hantverk Knopplist – A Rail Of Oiled Pegs
A knopplist is a strip of knobs, and it is standard equipment in a Swedish hall. The Iris Hantverk Knopplist in oiled maple is a long flat rail with a close row of turned pegs angled slightly upward, which is what stops a coat sliding off. Fixed above the radiator it dries wet hats; over the worktop it takes aprons and tea towels. Maple is pale and hard, so it stays light on the wall and does not dent when a rucksack swings into it.
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9. Nofred Step Up – Two Steps For Short People
Baking season is the season of children wanting to see the worktop. The Nofred Step Up stool in oak gives them two: a lower step to climb on and an upper one to stand or sit on, with handles cut into the sides so it can be dragged from sink to cooker. The feet are cut as arches, which keeps it steady on an uneven kitchen floor, and it is solid enough to stay in the family after the child who needed it has grown past it.
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10. Muurla Carrier – One Sheet, Bent Twice
The pile beside the sofa grows through the winter: weekend papers, half-read magazines, the catalogue nobody threw out. The Muurla Carrier answers it with a single sheet of moulded plywood curved into an open-sided box, with a handle cut through the top so the lot can be carried to the recycling or the fire in one trip. Open sides mean you can see what is in there, which is what stops a magazine rack becoming a place where paper is forgotten.
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Final Thoughts
Wood is the only material in the house that is improved by being used. Steel scratches and plastic goes grey and brittle, but an oiled board picks up the marks of the knife and reads better for them, and a peg rail darkens where hands have touched it. The maintenance is modest: wipe rather than soak, keep boards and spoons out of the dishwasher, and re-oil them when they look thirsty.
Buy one or two rather than the whole list. A tray or a peg rail changes a corner on the day it arrives; a carved horse is a thirty-year object. All ten are in stock in the UK, Germany, Norway and Denmark, and the same piece can cost noticeably more in one shop than another, so compare them on ScandiDeals before you order.
