Copenhagen gallery owner Tina Seidenfaden Busck is a master at the unexpected mix: in her world, stripes collide with florals, Noguchi lanterns mix with grandmotherly table lamps, Aalto stools are paired with Victorian fainting couches—and it all manages to look extraordinary.
Back in 2011, Tina opened The Apartment, her influential design showcase set in a restored early 18th century apartment styled as living quarters, all of it for sale. The setup changes frequently—in 2014, we featured Ilse Crawford’s Residency at The Apartment. What remains a constant is Tina’s penchant for pairing pattern with pattern and the rarefied with the homey. More recently, she took over a second apartment in the same building in Copenhagen’s Christianshavn and dubbed it The Residence. Available to rent, it has two bedrooms, a drawing room, dining room, and bright kitchen, all furnished with things that caught Tina’s roving eye. If you like what you see, you can buy it—Tina’s online gallery is open for business and she has much more waiting in the wings.
Photography courtesy of The Apartment DK.
Above: Tina began her career working for Sotheby’s and is a longtime collector. She says The Apartment and The Residence are about “creating an intimate design experience” and describes the rooms as “a dialogue of 20th century furniture, contemporary art, and design.”
Shown here, The Residence dining room, which doubles as a work space. The windows overlook a canal and church spire.
Above: “The Muller Van Severen Long Table is the key in this room,” says Tina. “This is where you can have dinner parties or make yourself a home office, read the newspaper, and relax on the daybed.” The green-shaded Flos Snoopy Lamp on the back wall is one of Tina’s signature pieces. Above: The walls are painted Farrow & Ball Drawing Room Blue. The dining chairs are a Vico Magistretti design from 1959. Above: In the living room, a wing chair is upholstered in a classic American hexagonal quilt pattern. (Tina also hangs quilts as art; see her collection of antique quilts here.) The Flat Weave Rug is a 1950s Swedish design by Märta Måås-Fjetterström. Above: Old-fashioned table lamps with printed fabric shades are another Tina specialty: see Trend Alert: The Return of the Artfully Patterned Lampshade. The horse is part of an Americana whirligig. Above: In the library corner of the room, Tina layered patterns on a rattan chair and paired it with Ettore Sottsass’s Enameled Metal Duck Lamp “for a bit of humor.” Above: A reminder in this digital age: “books always add a cozy feeling to a room,” says Tina. The wallpaper is the Cubism pattern from Tapet Cafe. Above: The pretty-in-pink powder room. The Painted Stripe wallpaper—black, orange, and pink—is another Tapet Cafe design. The Brass Mirror is a Gio Ponti classic from the 1950s available from The Apartment (“we’re constantly on the search for them,” says Tina); known as the F.A. 33, it’s also in production from Gubi. Above: The “extended kitchenette: “It’s simple but colorful and the perfect place to have a cup of coffee and hang out in the morning,” says Tina. Above: “We added the rug to make it warmer and hung a big installation by Anselm Reyle (which, unfortunately, cannot be seen in the photos),” adds Tina. “It’s a practical space but that doesn’t mean it has to be boring—art also has a place here.” The rug is one of a collection of Beni Ouarain’s from The Apartment. Above: Some decorating rules Tina lives by: “Invest in things that speak to you and that you feel you can use for a long time. Use colors and wallpaper on the walls. Mix materials, textures, colors, and patterns to make the room contemporary and cozy. It’s easy to get too clinical a look—but why?”
Case in point, The Residence’s red bedroom cloaked in a floral by English grande-dame wallpaper designer Marthe Armitage. “To complete The Apartment feeling, we had the mattresses reupholstered in a striped textile (actually the same Tapet Cafe stripe as the wallpaper in the toilet),” says Tina. “We have antique or vintage American quilts on the beds; I love how the craftsmanship materializes in these pieces.”
Above: A robin’s egg hall leads to bedroom two. Note the brass hooks on the wall—for the wooden version, see The Useful—and Inexpensive—Accordion Peg Rack. Above: The room is papered in Marthe Armitage’s version of the Willow pattern. Above: The bedside lights in both rooms are Artek Glass Table Lamps by Maire Gullichsen with custom shades by The Apartment: “they give such a good and comfortable light.” Above: A large tub is the centerpiece of the master bath lined with Swedish green marble. A 1950s French Bar Cart serves as storage shelves.
What’s next for Tina? “I am constantly trying to push the limits for what a boutique is and can be. Soon—as soon as the Covid-19 crisis allows—we’ll open a new gallery in Christianshavn, returning to the the feeling of a private residence, only in a much more maximalist style than we’ve ever done before.”
