Skärva: Creating a Place in the Country by Kerstin Barup and Mats Edström (Byggförlaget 1991) tells about the historical countryside residence designed by Fredrik Henrik af Chapman and Carl August Ehrensvärd.
In the 1780s, a Swedish fleet was designed and built by Fredrik Henrik af Chapman, the great naval architect, at Karlskrona in southern Sweden. Chapman’s official superior, admiral Carl August Ehrensvärd, was an artist inspired by classical ruins in Italy. The two men were distinguished Swedish figures in the age of Linneus and Swedenborg.
From the dockyard, Chapman could see his estate at Skärva, where he and Ehrensvärd had united antique and Swedish vernacular architecture by the Baltic: a turfed roof rose above red-tarred timbered walls but, entered through a portico inspired by Paestum, the private rooms of the house lay wall-to-wall with servants’ quarters. Graced with a Greek temple, a Gothic tower and a commemorative grave, its richly-wooded park has grown over 200 years into a setting of unrivalled natural magnificence.
Both practising architects, the authors describe this late 18th-century architectural experiment through contemporary records, paintings and sketches, as well as through 20th-century plans, drawings and photographs. The book offers an insight into a manner of thinking about architecture that, like the house it created, still retains its power to astonish.
– Kerstin Barup, Mats Edström, Skärva: Creating a Place in the Country (Byggförlaget, 1991), book description
The text is in English. The book is illustrated with black-and-white photographs and architectural drawings.
Our copy in stock is in good condition. The pages are clean, no markings. The glueing of the binding is fine. The covers show some small signs of edge wear, shelf wear and use.
