Walking on a snowy beach, then going home to watch a movie with her kids by the fire, candles lit against the darkness of a Scandinavian winter. That’s what Christmas is about for Kristina Dam. No tinsel or overconsumption, just peace, nature and family.
She’s known for her sculptural, pared-back approach to furniture, lighting, textiles, accessories and interiors, so it’s no surprise festive excess makes Kristina shudder. ‘I’m not a huge Christmas person,’ she confesses, with a smile. The Danish designer shares her house – a tranquil sanctuary on the outskirts of Copenhagen – with her husband Ketil and their two children. It has featured in these pages before, but revisiting it at Christmastime shows how a minimalist can embrace the spirit of the season, infusing rooms with light, colour and warmth in a subtle, unostentatious way.
Kristina freely admits it has been a journey. There’s a running joke that when they started celebrating as a family years ago, the staunch minimalist decorated the house entirely in black and white. ‘They were like, “What are you doing? No red? No green?”’ she laughs. Her approach has softened since that first monochrome Christmas, but red is still firmly on the naughty list, despite her children’s pleas. It doesn’t mean she’s a grinch though, just someone who applies her style to all aspects of her life.
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‘I love to bring nature into my home in winter, collecting green things and making decorations out of them,’ she says. Her favourite activity is crafting decorations with her kids out of clay and paper – just as long as it’s white or natural-coloured, with perhaps a touch of gold permitted. She uses her grandma’s baubles and a ceramic advent candleholder. ‘It’s traditional, white and super simple,’ she explains. ‘That’s why I like it.’
She clears shelves of their carefully curated objects to make room. ‘To put decorations on top of decorations, it’s too much!’ she asserts. ‘I can’t wait to take it down – on the 26th I’m already, “Okay, it’s done, move on!”’ As design and brand director at Broste Copenhagen, however, Kristina and her team have developed a range of Christmas decorations; these, of course, appear in her own home, and she likes the idea that they are part of so many people’s celebrations, offering a calmer take on festivity.
Her style may be minimal, but Christmas traditions are still important to the designer. She cherishes her yearly trip with her parents to select the best tree, and Christmas Eve dinner is a big deal in Denmark. On the menu is duck, served with potatoes and red cabbage in honour of her countryside upbringing, followed by small cakes.
Activities centre around the dining table she designed that stands in one corner of the airy extension to her historic house. One thing she does go big on is illumination, with candles, lamps and fairy lights twinkling everywhere. ‘It’s really dark, so you need a lot of lights here and there,’ she explains. ‘We decorate the trees outside of the house just to light up the streets.’
Since launching her eponymous studio in 2012, Kristina has applied the same clear-eyed vision to her work. Her practice has evolved from artworks to a focus on furniture, always underpinned by a sculptural minimalism, as seen in the lounge chair she launched earlier this year. ‘I keep to the DNA. Art and architecture is still where I get my inspiration.’ Her studio is currently releasing a collection of glass cabinets and she wants to make more furniture and objects for cafés and hotels, to bring her vision for a simpler, more sustainable way of living to as many people as possible.
‘I want all my products to be made of good solid materials – FSC wood, of course, marbles and stones,’ she says. ‘I think more people will buy less, but buy good things. That’s what I believe in: art and good things!’ As a Christmas message, it couldn’t be better. kristinadam.dk
