THE SECRET HISTORY
As design collaborator Ditte Lamptey restores her Copenhagen apartment, she uncovers its mysteries along the way.
As design collaborator Ditte Lamptey restores her Copenhagen apartment, she uncovers its mysteries
NNØRREBRO IS COPENHAGEN'S MOST DIVERSE notorious a decade ago for drug gangs and squatters’ riots but increasingly gentrified. Although its streets are lined with classic 19th-century apartment buildings, they were mostly built for workers and are not as grand as those in the traditionally wealthier parts of the Danish capital. That’s why the apartment owned by design collaborator Ditte Lamptey on the main street of Nørrebro is so remarkable. It had been the personal domain of a wealthy yeast maker who built the handsome corner complex in 1890, keeping the first floor for himself. Whereas the other apartments in the building have decorative stucco cornices and plastered walls, his was an Art Nouveau extravaganza — with four-metre-high walls lined in dadoheight wood panelling, ornate doorways and elaborately painted wooden ceilings. Deeply religious, the original owner carved, “Until now the Lord has helped” in Danish over the door frame of what may well have been his study. Lamptey had lived around the edgy neighbourhood for more than 20 years and says when she saw the 240-metre apartment four years ago she had never seen anything like it and bought it on the spot. “Someone called me and said, ‘Ditte, come now and you have to run!’ I raced down and I just signed for it.” Having sought another abode for prosaic reasons — she wanted zoning that allowed her to run her charitable design business Solidary People from home — Lamptey instead got a life’s work rich in undocumented history and full of surprises. It has transformed her life and not just by introducing a colour palette far removed from the Nordic whites she was used to. When she first moved in and was lacking a bed, she slept on the living room floor and would lie there gazing at the ceiling, entranced by the quirks of its largely religious imagery. “What you see is quite funny because you see angels and demons and dragons and then you see corn,” she says. The corn apparently refers to the former owner’s yeast business but now is a lodestar for Lamptey, whose favourite colour is yellow. In decorating, she strove to be loyal to the apartment, resisting temptation to make it typically Scandi. Walls pick up colours from the ceilings — the soft green of the angels in the living room and mint green in the dining room. “You have to respect the artwork that’s here already,” she says, “so you can’t do a super-futuristic white flat — that would be ridiculous.” When she bought the apartment only the living and dining room ceilings were visible; the rest were masked by low, false ceilings. All the walls were dingy white, the oak floors scruffy and there was no bathroom, just a toilet and basin in a room the size of a closet. As Lamptey started the slow process of restoration she began piecing together the history, which had been lost over time. Removing the false ceiling in what became her office, she was stunned to discover an intricately carved wooden ceiling. She matched its intense coral- coloured detailing to paint one wall. “I was scared because I thought it was a very vicious colour in a way but it works.” The rest of the office is rose pink, which Lamptey says was originally a princely colour, and therefore appropriate for such an old-school “gentleman’s” room. There is so much woodwork that the apartment could be oppressive but Lamptey has kept it light by judiciously selecting Modernist furniture, contemporary art and objects. “As I’m decorating, I’m trying to have the old feeling but still make it contemporary with the furniture not being too old-fashioned or heavy,” she notes. It helped that since she first started working Lamptey has acquired Danish modern classics such as the Poul Kjaerholm PK 22 chair and Arne Jacobsen Swan chair in her living room. They’re both well worn, which pleases the designer, who shares the apartment with her 13-year-old son, Louis, and their cat.“I bought the chairs when I was very young and I like that they are really worn and the cat’s scratched them,” she says. “I don’t like it when you go to these homes where you can’t feel any people living there.” Lamptey considers herself more of a custodian of the apartment than an owner, and envisages many more years of painstaking work before everything is restored to its former glory. “I have to take care of it,” Lamptey says, adding that one reason she agreed to have it photographed was to document everything, because heritage protection was limited. “The problem is, the day I die — because I’m not giving it up — I will have to have something written down because no one is looking out for it.”