Interior Stylist, Artist & Founder of Polken Studio

Copenhagen, Denmark

When I discovered Simone’s Copenhagen home, I immediately fell in love with how bright, airy and welcoming it looked. Salmon and beige colors, big windows, a floating bookcase, different colors of wood and many textiles from jute rugs to linen sheets…Simone is an interior stylist, artist and painter. Her art work also represents her interior style as well. She explains her art as “it may be simple abstracts, but all my works are built up by layers, that may look flat from a distance, but up close you can see all the little stories behind them”. Her home is very intentional, very layered even though it has multiple tones of natural colors, just like her paintings. I am very excited to share this interview, she is definitely a very big inspiration for my interior style.

You can find her @simonepolk :)

How did you end up deciding this home is the one? When you started decorating, did you have a mood board in mind, did it happen organically?

My husband and I hunted the market for apartments to buy for 6 months and already 9 years ago everything was so expensive. This apartment came on the market as a co-housing flat, so perhaps not as great an investment as to an ordinary buy, but at the time we felt we hit the jackpot compared to what we had seen. Now we wished we had been more foreseeing towards the future as the real estate market is close to impossible to be a part of in Copenhagen. So we might be living in this place till we die.

Screen Shot 2022-02-25 at 10.39.15 AM.png

Screen Shot 2022-02-25 at 10.39.30 AM.png

Do you have a dream piece of furniture you have in mind?

I guess if I won the lottery, I would hurry up and buy a big beautiful Soriana couch from Cassina! Or the beautiful organic shaped wooden dining table from @studio0405.

Do you have a dream interior project on mind, maybe another home, a client…?

I really love to follow along the homes of @eyeswoon, @carlaypage, @mullervanseveren, @jo_rodgers, @hoskelsa and @pjmattan.

Tell us a bit about both of you, who are you? I know that you are a painter and interior stylist, how did all that incorporate into creating this beautiful home?

I’m Simone Polk, 36 years old and working solely now as an artist with a little tiny studio 200 meters from my home. I live in a two storey apartment on the top floor of an old building from 1893. I live there with my daughter and husband. I have always had a big passion for homes and people’s way of making their homes. Remember looking through decor books from a very early age and now still get a rush looking through people’s windows at night walking by. I guess my love for homes lies within the history and personality in the choices people have made rather than fancy design and expensive furniture.

What always drives my attention in your home is that you combine very soft and warm tones with black and darker shapes, such as the art you have in your living room. It is a very interesting contrast, that welcoming energy with the bold, abstract, geometrical art. What are your biggest inspirations for your home, interior and decorating? Where did your interior journey start?

I’m particularly fond of artists´ and architects´ homes from the 1950’s-70’s and for me the Danish furniture designer and architect Finn Juhl has been a huge inspiration for a long time. His home still stands almost as he left it and is now a part of the museum Ordrupgaard. He was close friends with artist Wilhelm Lundstrøm whose works are a big part of the decor. There too, the home is filled with his beautiful wooden furniture and especially there is a bench with a specific salmon colored cushion, that is still one of the most beautiful things I have seen. And ever since then I have been on the hunt for finding elements in that same pretty salmon color:)

You have a very beautiful, unique space. Tall windows, lots of light coming in, light wood floors…You use lots of different fabric, have books everywhere…Can you share more of your favorite pieces in your home, where you got them? Your bookcase is one of my personal favorites.

It’s funny that the bookcase has gotten so much attention. A lot of people refers to it as ´the floating bookcase´. In reality it is 6 cheap birch modules put together from the low budget woodstore @traevarefabrikernesudsalg. It is one of my husband’s proudest achievements getting them up, but the secret is that behind the cases, there is at least 15 big holes from the process and that is why it’s never coming down:) My own personal favorites must be our little marble coffee table, that is a vintage piece and heavy as an elephant. Also so happy that I finally got my hands on an original Togo. So soft and so comfortable. I felt quite edgy when I chose to have it in a creamy leather, but for me the texture of leather combined with my other light furniture and their different fabrics, makes a lovely harmony and tactile contrast, that I’m so fond of.

Let’s talk more about your art and POLKENSTUDIO. Were you always in a creative, artistic field? What’s your purpose with your art (maybe there isn’t any and it’s just for you to express your artistic side, I wonder)? And where can everyone get a piece of your beautiful work, commission a piece perhaps?

I make my art as Simone Polk and right now actually contemplating changing my IG-name to that, so there is a red thread in the things I do. I started my IG-page @polkenstudio 2,5 years ago, when I knew my old career in the TV-business was about to end. Studio means a place of practice and as my husband’s nickname for me is Polken, I combined the two and thought of it to be a little new playground for me to practice my more creative and aesthetic side. My dad is an artist, so every once in a while I had done some pieces together with him during both my childhood as well as in my adult years. I went freelance as an artist as well as an interior stylist quite quickly after I started my page, but found that the whole editorial side of styling decor for magazines felt too shallow for me to love. I loved to tell stories and create moods, but I guess, it felt so meaningless sometimes to lend a bunch of expensive furniture, make beautiful pictures and then return it all back again. A bit superficial compared to the feel and stories of real homes, where someone wear in the furniture and where every patina is part of a real memory.

And long story short, that is probably what is behind my artworks. The feel of texture and tactility, that invites people to a closer look. It may be simple abstracts, but all my works are built up by layers, that may look flat from a distance, but up close you can see all the little stories behind them. For example my art series ‘Patches’ and ‘Patched Up' came from a need to repair an earlier big linen piece hanging over our bed. My daughter had been jumping up and down on the bed and accidentally kicked her foot through the piece making a big hole in the middle of it. I patched it up using small squares of pigmented paper, that I gently painted over so the different textures still appeared. Now this piece is hanging in my living room as a “prototype” and will never be for sale. And the tale of “Patches” in general is so relevant today as it is also a story about fixing things, when they are broken instead of throwing them away. Of layers that each tell a story. That’s actually almost the same theme for my art series “Backwards”, where I source old paintings and give them new life and aesthetics by painting a new piece on the back canvas of the painting. The back frame is often patinated beautifully and really gives the pieces something special, that you can’t make from a new canvas. Again the layers of history adds to the story and style of the piece.