International designer Beata Heuman collaborates with luxe wallpaper house de Gournay on a collection that is inspired by her childhood home in Sweden.
“Your home needs to be a fold for your past, present and future,” Swedish A-list decorator Beata Heuman wrote in her best-selling coffee table book, Every Room Should Sing.
“It should be a combination of all the things that make you.”
Heuman is one of the world’s foremost interior designers whose client list includes model and actress of the moment Adwoa Aboah.
One of the key experiences that forged Beata Heuman’s aesthetic was her childhood home in Sweden.
Set on an estate, she managed to buy one of the cottages several years ago and set about personalising it to her taste and her memories, creating a new space for her family.
In it, you see jumbo gingham on one of her sofas, a trend she started that went viral.
There are other small practical elements, like a small overhead shelf for the toaster by the breakfast table, so you can put on some toast, sit down, and hear the toaster pop when it’s ready, so it’s still warm when you slather it in butter.
On the walls are decorative papers.
She worked with de Gournay, a company founded in the 1980s by Claud Cecil Gurney to revive the art of hand-painted custom wallpapers.
These are made to measure and so fit a room’s proportions and period features perfectly.
The result is two collections of papers.
The first is called Fruit Garden, inspired by the endless summers of southern Sweden when the days don’t get dark until almost midnight in high summer.
Depicting fruit trees in blossom, including plum, apple, linden and elderflower; there are sprays of snake’s-head fritillary, wild poppies and sweet briar roses all blooming at once. Within the scene, astrantia, oregano, and martagon lilies flourish here too.
All this detail is hand-painted by artisans. It is alive with birdsong, and the trees rise from a meadow of embroidered wildflowers.
The design captures the joy and abundance of summer and costs from about €4,214 per panel, which can measure between 1.5 and 2.13 metres wide.
A second paper in the Fruit Garden range is Delft Folly, a diamond-pane pattern evoking classic Delft tiles in a vivid blue and white palette that you can see spanning the ceiling.
It costs from about €1,636 for panels of the same width.
Heuman’s second range is called Petra Dura, a wallcovering that evokes trompe l’oeil marble effects enhanced by the addition of embroidery and beading for a three-dimensional look.
Both paper ranges have this tactility to them. It’s what makes them bring a room to life. The papers have real depth.
The collections are on show in de Gournay’s New York showroom on the Upper East Side.
Heuman has transformed two rooms into an immersive interior, filled with her furniture, lighting and homewares from her celebrated Shoppa collection.
Include playful porcelain pieces, including the statement, hand-carved porcelain goose tureens with silver glaze, each about €2,151.
There’s also blanc de chine candlesticks, about €808 each and a vide poche, about €858. All feature old traditional oriental making techniques.
To find out more, visit beataheuman. comand degournay.com
