Folk ArtFolk Art
Painted by Firelight in a Forest Cabin: 40 Scandinavian Folk Art Motifs
The kurbits was invented by painters who were never shown the plant.
Peek inside →Every Animal Here Has a Secret
I’m Mirabelle, and I have a confession: I didn’t plan a folk collection. I planned a quiet winter. Then I discovered that almost every animal I wanted to draw already had a famous ancestor, and each one left behind a trick that makes a drawing look far more expensive than a single black pen.
Folk art was made for exactly this time of year. When the fields froze, people in Sweden, Russia, Lapland and Pennsylvania sat by the fire with 1 dark colour and made things bold enough to be copied for 300 years. Which is why it suits a November evening, a Christmas card list and a hall that needs cheering up.
Take the robin. In 1797 Thomas Bewick engraved him by carving away every line that should stay white, and every bird book since has copied him. The secret is that the most famous robin in Britain is mostly holes: fill only the berries and the eye, leave the breast as thin white scallops, and he looks light enough to sing. Mine leans on the mantel between 3 candles and gets more compliments than the candles.
The hedgehog has an even better story. 2,000 years ago Pliny wrote that hedgehogs carry apples home by rolling on them. Nobody has ever seen one do it, and nobody wants to be the one to tell him. Draw the spines as dots, never lines, keep every apple a clean white circle, then tape him to a frosty window. The postman now slows down.
The reindeer comes from Lapland, where carvers scratched lines into reindeer horn with a knife and rubbed soot from the fire into them with a thumb. The double line on your page is the knife; your pen is the soot, only tidier. Ink the antlers first, from the head outwards, then fold him into a card and prop him against the teapot. Breakfast, upgraded.
The Brothers Grimm, it turns out, got the recipe wrong. In their first edition of 1812 the witch’s house had bread walls, a cake roof and windows of clear sugar. Leave those sugar windows white and the cottage looks lit from inside, which makes it the best gift tag I know. The bear in the scarf comes from Gorodets on the Volga, where painters skipped the pencil entirely and finished with tiny white flicks: 1 white comma in each scarf petal, and he looks like he owns the hall.
And then there’s the owl. Kenojuak Ashevak made her Enchanted Owl in the Canadian Arctic in 1960, in just 2 colours, and in December 2024 a single test print of it sold for 366,000 Canadian dollars. Fill the big black shapes with short strokes all going 1 way, and the black reads printed, not scribbled. Yours will cost about 60¢. The owl won’t know the difference.
My favourite home for any of them is inside a cupboard door, where only the nosy will find it, and it secretly makes you smile every time you reach for the jam. 2 of these animals are yours to print tonight. The other 11, each with its secret, are waiting in the set.
