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Imitation painted bureau
Johan Nils Asplind1785/1800
Nordiska Museet
Stockholm, Sweden
Bureau, Gustavian, probably 1780s, painted by decorative painter in Falun, Nils Asplind.
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Details
- Title: Imitation painted bureau
- Creator: Johan Nils Asplind
- Creator Lifespan: 1736/1820
- Date Created: 1785/1800
- Location Created: Falun, Sweden
- Subjects Depicted: Animal, bird; Plant, laurel wreath; Plant, flower, rose; Plant, flower, cornflower; Plant, berries
- Subject: Gustavian bureau
- More Information: In 1785 Johan Nils Asplind was given permission by the manufacturers' court in Falun to establish himself as an ornamental painter. According to his own testimony, he was trained in painting, drawing, and portrait painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. He had probably also been apprenticed to a skilled decorative painter or varnisher. Furniture was made by local joiners and then decorated by Asplind's workshop. The bureau was probably made at the beginning of Asplind's career. The painting imitates a Gustavian veneered bureau with figurative wooden inlays of a type that was modern in Stockholm during the 1770s and 1780s. The two bottom drawers are designed like a single unit in the Stockholm style. The front of the bureau is decorated with naturalistically painted garlands of roses, cornflowers and golden birds against a background of painted imitation veneer. If you look closely, you can see the imitation veneer joints. When the bureau was new, it must have looked confusingly similar to a veneer bureau. The bureau is unsigned, but bureaux made by Nils Asplind in the same design can be found at Stockholm Palace, two of which are inscribed: “målad på asplinds Wärkstad j fahlund” (painted at Asplind's workshop in Falun). Asplind was awarded several royal orders and called himself “Royal Court Painter.” He was best known as a decorative painter of furniture – folding tables, bureaux, clock cases and boxes – but he also had major interior design projects on estates and mills in Dalarna and Gästrikland.
- Materials and Techniques: Painted pine.
- Type: Furniture
- Rights: Photo: Peter Segemark, © Nordiska museet
- External Link: http://www.digitaltmuseum.se/things/byr/S-NM/NM.0231465A-B
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