Wild Swans - 2010

We are very excited about the year ahead and the new season, but mostly the new designers we are adding !

We are finally coming to the point where 98% of our brands are from Scandinavia and mainly Denmark.

Giving yourself the boundaries of everything, coming from Scandinavia, isn't always easy. It can take time time to source the right brands, the right quality and price point, the right companies to work with and the right feeling that will work outside Scandinavia. The challenge is finding the right brands, be it small or bigger brands which are also not yet represented in the UK.

More great labels will be arriving at Wild Swans this spring ..

To Dare...

'To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.'

Soren Kierkegaard

Janteloven - Jante Law

Jante Law refers to a pattern of group behaviour towards individuals within Scandinavian communities, which negatively portrays and criticizes success and achievement as unworthy and inappropriate.

It has been observed as a form of behaviour for centuries, but was identified as a series of rules, the Jante Law, by the Norwegian/Danish author Aksel Sandemose in his novel A fugitive crosses his tracks.

The ten rules are :

1. Don't think that you are special.
2. Don't think that you are of the same standing as us.
3. Don't think that you are smarter than us.
4. Don't fancy yourself as being better than us.
5. Don't think that you know more than us.
6. Don't think that you are more important than us.
7. Don't think that you are good at anything.
8. Don't laugh at us.
9. Don't think that anyone of us cares about you.
10. Don't think that you can teach us anything.

Pleasure

'Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it'.

Soren Kierkegaard

Alphabet

We like this very recent composition - Alphabet, by Tim Fishlock
It's a litho print which appears' to be from the 70s.

Danish Design Toys

Danish Toys echo the simplicity and good design, ever present in most Danish Design.


We love simple wooden toys from Scandinavia.

We hope to be selling toys like these at Wild Swans very soon. They are such elegant simple designs.


Plane is a simple wooden aeroplane for children of all ages, designed by the Danish designer Ole Sondergaard.



'Above me in the distance can be heard the sound of the engine of a little sports plane. It is summer and the air is completely still. The sky is a brilliant blue and i am drawn when i see a plane in the sky. With an almost childlike joy i can permanently forget both time and place and soar up into the wide blue yonder'.

Freedom

'Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom'.

Soren Kierkegaard

Swanning It ..

Marc Jacobs is also gracefully swan-ing it in Copenhagen.
Here she comes...

Life

"Life can only be understood backwards.. but it must be lived forwards".

Soren Kierkegaard

Recent Shots of Copenhagen

Proscenium, symmetry, proscenium..


Its cold out there...



The Old Library

the motif repeats in the floor..

the escalator up to the New Library.

Only in Copenhagen, could trains allocate spaces for bicycles..




The golden ochre that brightens the Danish winters

Man manipulates Nature..

Or does he.. what is this oddity ?


Copenhagen trees that have been trimmed and then echo a curious, fragile and quirky resonance

The Father of Existentialism

Soren Kierkegaard

bears the honor of being known as the father of Existentialism.

"A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him".

The Coldest Copenhagen Winter

It has been the coldest winter in Copenhagen for 30 years.. it made London seem like a heat wave! Some say that this winter could be the coldest for a hundred years.