I first learned of the work of Cecilie Stöger Nachman through a collaboration she once did with Copenhagen children’s store Studio Mini. Through Nachmans, Cecilie’s “own small online universe”, she creates handmade objects from her archive of vintage printed fabrics. I promptly bought one of her fabric-covered boxes and have been using it as a repository for all the small treasures of my daughter’s childhood—a found piece of string, a smooth rock, pocket-sized drawings. I was immediately enamored with Cecilie’s approach; her work feels as special and enduring as the handmade objects from generations past. So when I noticed that she and her family had moved into a new home that reflected the same sensibility, I reached out to learn more.
Cecilie lives with her husband, Ulrik Ejlers, an art director at an advertising agency, and their two daughters—Hannah, age 7, and Dora, age 4—in Frederiksberg C, in central Copenhagen. They had lived in the neighborhood for nearly 15 years before finding their perfect apartment there. “[Frederiksberg] feels like a small village in the middle of the city, with leafy residential streets, and we love how central it is and that both of our workplaces are only a 10-minute bike ride away,” says Cecilie, who plans to step back from her in-house role at The Poster Club to focus on Nachmans 2.0 and launch a creative agency with two Copenhagen-based partners.
The 1,100-square-foot ground-floor apartment occupies a building dating to 1901, with its original details intact, though it required considerable updating. “The apartment was in fairly poor condition when we took it over,” Cecilie explains. “Fortunately, the bathroom was relatively new and finished in neutral materials, and we kept the original floor plan. But we installed a new kitchen and hired a carpenter to create several built-in solutions. We also refinished the floors and repainted throughout.”
The result is colorful and whimsical, yet distinctly grown-up. “For me, a home should reflect the people who live there. Both my husband and I love color, so it makes perfect sense that our home is full of it. We could never live in a completely streamlined white space.” Here’s a look inside.
Photography by Caroline Parkel courtesy of Cecilie Stöger Nachman.
Cecilie looks forward to growing into the newly renovated space: “At the moment, our apartment is actually a little too clean for my taste, but it’s a new home and these things take time. I’m looking forward to gradually adding layers of vintage lamps, textiles, books, and collected objects.”
“I started making my fabric-covered boxes in the spring of 2020 when everything shut down during the pandemic. My passion for collecting vintage textiles suddenly found a purpose, and I loved the meditative process of working with my hands and shutting everything else out,” she explains. “At the same time, we had our youngest daughter, and the boxes were flexible enough to make from home while she slept. There was a great deal of interest, and that became the beginning of Nachmans.”
For more Copenhagen interiors see our posts:
- A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That: A Celebration of Art and Design at The Residence in Copenhagen
- Kitchen of the Week: Restoring 1870s Charm in a Copenhagen Kitchen, Delft Tiles and All
- A Testing Ground for Objects: Inside the Copenhagen Apartment of Kasia Sznajder and Fred Aartun of aarticles
- Young Architect Freja Bak Josias’s Art-Filled Family Hideaway in Copenhagen
- Femte Til Venstre: A Danish Couple’s Thoughtfully Appointed 1927 Townhouse in Copenhagen
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