My Vintage Classroom Poster From Sweden
Hello friends. I am now back to my daily routine — for real. Recharged and happy, summer is sadly officially over for us in Seattle and my children are ready for school equipped with tanned legs, new back packs and shiny shoes. I want to thank you all for the support you gave me during the summer months when I, at times, felt like a lousy blog friend. To my surprise, the blog statistics even show that my traffic is up quite a bit. I don’t know if I deserve it but thank you, thank you!
Now, let’s jump right back into business.
It is hard to miss the “Industrial trend” that has been going on in the design world for a little while — galvanized steel products combined with rough wood and a vintage look & feel. We have also seen a lot of educational posters coming back in vogue.
When visiting Stockholm a few weeks ago, I found a fun store around the corner from the apartment I was staying in, called “Brandstationen” (The Firestation). The store is jam packed with lovely and funky, mainly Swedish, vintage design things.
In one of the corners I found a whole stack of lovely vintage classroom posters. I put one on hold.
A few days later, I finally got to meet this lovely lady who I met in the virtual blog world about a year ago (thanks to our Ally!) . Her name is Mia and she is the stylish and creative soul behind the must read blog Solid Frog.
I had invited Mia to join me in a design project (I will tell you more about that later) and she drove up to Stockholm with her family to meet up with me. This picture is taken about 20 minutes after we had officially met for the first time and what do I do? I drag her into my newly discovered store to look at vintage posters! No wonder we connected!
Mia and I spent the entire day together and it felt like we had known each other for 20 years. Later in the evening we went out with a couple of my close friends in Stockholm – and the fun just continued!
Anyway, Mia gave one of the educational posters a big nod and it came home with me. I find it very unique with its black dramatic background (I have never seen one like this before. It reminds me of Josef Frank’s famous fabrics). I think it requires a white wall and the guest room might just be the perfect space. I will share with you later where it ends up. Meanwhile, I am just enjoying the colors and the fun details. The poster is from the 40′s and shows all the intricate elements of a Violet. (There is a cheat chart in the back for the teacher). Very often these posters were made by well known Swedish artists.
With all the beauty it offers it also makes me stop in my tracks and reflect a little. Schools (in fact our entire society) are moving away from real books and anything that requires manual (or should we say real?) effort. Instead web based classroom education seems to be the future. I can’t help but wonder what that will do to our kids’ use of their senses? Will they even learn to see in color? I think this poster is a stunning piece of art and I would like to think that the students back then were inspired when the teacher went thoroughly through all the elements of this beautiful flower. Will beauty and art be lost in this web crazy, social media and often surreal world?
I am holding on to my old educational poster and it will work as a reminder to myself making sure that my kids are exposed to a lot of color and realness in their daily lives.
Before I end today I would like to extend a big thank you to the lovely Manvi, Lana, Charlotta and Mackenzie who all helped out with the second batch of guest posts. You are all oh so so talented and always kind and mega supportive.
Thank you all — it is good to be back in the saddle again!
Images via:
1. Apartment Therapy, 2. Apartment Therapy, 3. Hannis Hem. 4. Olands Byggnadsvard, 5. Unknown (sorry!). All the rest via Splendid Willow.
