Scents and Sensibility ; Danish Eco-Warrior Isabella Smith's Home Is More Bloomsbury Than Cool Scandi, Says Katie Law

Summary

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THINK of a typical Scandinavian home and you imagine either Gustavian Greys with Nordic light filtering through sheer white curtains or modernist plywood chairs, primary colours and hard shiny surfaces. So it is refreshing to discover that Danish interiors guru Isabella Smith's home, a forester's lodge on the edge of a huge beech estate called Gisselfeld, 60km south of Copenhagen, is a busy whirl of flowers, colour and black, mixing up the dark florals of William Morris with the exuberance of the Bloomsbury look.

"It's true that our home is not really Scandinavian at all. I grew up in an aesthetic home, filled with books and Fifties Danish design. My father had a strict eye for it, and, since my mother was Swedish, everything was white, blue or plain wood. It was restricted, so I wanted to do something totally different," says Smith, who has worked in almost every aspect of the interiors business, from editing her own lifestyle magazine called Isabellas to setting up an online and mail-order homeware business. Now she has launched Maison Belle, a range of efficient yet eco-friendly household and laundry products.

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Scents and Sensibility ; Danish Eco-Warrior Isabella Smith's Home Is More Bloomsbury Than Cool Scandi, Says Katie Law

"I love the Bloomsbury look and wanted to recreate it, together with a flavour of Arts and Crafts. I find these styles unpretentious, yet artistic and...

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