de Gournay X Beata Heuman
We visited Beata Heuman in her childhood home in Sweden to chronicle a very personal collaboration. The former farmhouse, an 18th century cottage nestled within the family complex, has been sensitively restored to reflect its humble origins. We worked with the London-based designer to create two bespoke de Gournay wallpapers, produced uniquely for the renovation, enlivening the countryside idyll she escapes to with her young family.
The dining room in Beata Heuman’s farmhouse in Sweden is a hand-painted vision of eternal summer. The original inspiration for the design was the garden frescoes of Rome’s Villa Livia, a landscape of trees and flowers that dates to the 1st century BC. Rendered in a naïve style on a rice paper ground, the wallpaper is a portrait of the farm’s local flora and fauna – planted by her mother over the years – where a meadow of snake’s head fritillaries, Queen of the Night tulips, martagon lilies and dahlias mingle with linden and fruit trees.
Hidden amongst the foliage are lady birds and other insects as swallows and robins take flight against the brilliant blue sky. But all is not quite as it seems in this Swedish arcadia, as, upon closer inspection, you notice that some of the fruits are on the brink of decay–a cunning nod to the designer’s time spent in Florence studying the still life paintings of Caravaggio and her own unique sense of humour.
Nestled in the attic of her family’s Swedish farmhouse, designer Beata Heuman cocooned her daughters’ bedroom in a bespoke embroidered wallcovering by de Gournay.
The delicate floral sprig motif was inspired by an antique silk embroidery fragment, but by reimagining the scale and altering the repeat, the historic design takes on a playful new character. Each posy is entirely embroidered by hand using thick, textural threads—bestowing each flower with an almost relief-like effect—on a humble brown rice paper ground.
