This is a great pleasure to show you a portrait of Cooee Design, which is today one of the leading design brands in Sweden with focus on accessories for the home.
Cooee Design was established in the year of 2005. The company started with focus on jewelry in plexi often seen on international fashion icons and the Scandinavian royalties.

And did you know, that Cooee Design is a family business with design know-how going back to the 50’s? Martin Åberg and his brother worked with innovations and design since long time. They designed an iconic paper bin in wood, that was sold to all the hotel rooms at SAS Hotel in Copenhagen that famous Arne Jacobsen had designed. The paper bin is still in the room 606, which still looks exactly like all rooms at that time. Amazing!

I am sure you know Cooee Design or even own one of their beautiful designs. Maybe one of their iconic vases?
But today you can learn even more about this company and enjoy an interesting interview with Catrine Åberg, the founder and creative director of the family business based in the south of Sweden.
Catrine Åberg was one of only 120 persons from whole Sweden (chosen by country governor) who represented their country on the 16th of June 2010 in Stockholm by the Royal Family during the celebration of the Crown Princess marriage.

Catrine Åberg is the charming creative person behind Cooee Design.

She is 39, happily married and had a cute little son Carl Walde (2,5 years old). Carl Walde makes her heart melt and gives her big smiles and laughter every single day. For her family comes absolute first. Secondly she loves to go to the ocean. Just spend time on the beach, picking shells, jumping in the dunes with her son. They both love to be at the beaches anytime of the year. It gives so much freedom and pure happiness. It is their happy place!

Catrine loves her creative work. No wonder! In her leisure time she loves to enjoy yoga, walks in the nature, love to travel and visit nice restaurants or museums for inspiration. She is fancy going to the cinema and gets a lot of inspiration there. And also because she loves English humor on tv and movies.

Catrine loves flowers and making arrangements, which you can admire on her Instagram feed.

Photo credit: @Cooee Design – Catrine Åberg

Dear Catrine, it is so wonderful having you here. Thank you!

We are all curios about some details, here we go.

• favorite place in your city: We only live in a small city on the countryside. I don’t have any specific special place actually. But close to our city there´s another city and there´s a big, modern playground in the beautiful woods, they have chickens , sheep and rabbits too plus a lovely café. It is nice to be here with the family and friends on the weekends.
• favorite country to spent a vacation: We have always loved traveling to France since I was only a newborn. I learned to swim in Nice for example. We´ve been there so many times as it feels like “home” in a way. Last year I also took my son there for the first time. He loved it too! I also love the English countryside very much.
• favorite piece of furniture: My dream lounge chair is Carl Hansen “CH25” it’s a classic Danish design icon.
• favorite song: I am a huge music fan and have been to many festivals, concerts so I guess I have to give a few songs actually; Adele “When we were young”, The Temptations “My Girl”, Cat Stevens “Father and Son”, Bradley Cooper “Maybe its time”, ”Never get used to” by Seinabo Sey,”Peer pressure” James Bay. A French song I like to listen to is “Mercy” by Madame Monsieur. I listen to quite a lot of French music actually. Some Swedish songs by young and great singers Molly Sandén “Rosa Himmel” and Linnea Henriksson “Den stora dagen”. I would like to recommend a Swedish band with the two sisters of First Aid Kit. They are amazing. I adore everything that Coldplay creates and the voice of Dermot Kennedy is pure heaven! I guess this questions really got me going, maybe I should have made a playlist for you (laughing).
• favorite movie: I love watching both tv-shows and movies. One film that really touched be was the movie about Astrid Lindgren that was released last year, “Unga Astrid”. Im so impressed by Astrid’s destiny and her courage, work with her storytelling. She’s an inspiring lady. Quite alike Coco Chanel who also has inspired me a lot in work.
• favorite flower: I love flowers and it’s a big interest of mine. It changes for the season being which is my favorite; dahlia in the Summer, Japanese anemones in the Autumn, Poppies during the Winter, Lily of the valley in the Spring.

How did you get the idea of creating your own family company?

I grew up in Family with great interest in Art and Design. My Grandmother was an artist/painter, my Grandfather art dealer, and my Grandfathers Brother was a furniture designer in the 50s and who worked with Arne Jacobsen in Denmark. For instance his wooden paper bins was included in all the hotel rooms of the iconic hotel designed by Arne Jacobsen, SAS Radison Copenhagen. You can still find his wooden paper bin in the room 606, as this room is kept like how all the rooms looked like at the time.

After a few years of work, study abroad the idea of starting our own brand, Cooee came up. Since 2008 Cooee is a Family business, with me and my Brother, Henrik Åberg in the lead of the company.

Is there a special meaning for „Cooee“?

“Cooee” means “Hi, hello” on the Aboriginal language and used to attract attention, specially at a distance. Signal used mostly by Australian Aborigines.

If you could choice only one, what would be your favourite material?

When it comes to my own brand, it is our iconic and unique ceramic, which have a very special feel to it.

Which of your products you don’t want to miss in your own home?

As I both love flowers and our silky matte finish on the ceramics; I always have lots of vases in my home in a nice mix of colors for the moment. But I find “Pillar” vase very easy to place like in a window, book shelf or coffee table

What inspires you?

It’s the daily life and everything that’s surrounds it.
Nature that I live close to, patterns in the sand on a beach, colors that appears in the nature. But also the city life with crowded streets of people, art museums, movies and music.

What is the mean idea behind Cooee Design?

We want to create minimalistic and timeless design objects and some of the first products we designed we were actually lacking at the market. Like an Advent lamp (which is very popular in Sweden/Scandinavia during the Advent time and darker months) in a trendy and minimalistic look. Most before were made in wood with more a traditional look. We designed a star in a frosty plastic material and the lamp could both be standing on a shelf/in the window as well as be hanging in a window. Its since then one of our best-selling items. So many items starts with something we miss ourselves in our homes.

Is there any story connected with Cooee Design you would like to share with us?

I have had the pleasure of meeting the Swedish Royal Family a couple of times.
I was invited as 1 of 3 people from our county to celebrate the Swedish Royal marriage of Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel in the year of 2010. The celebration was 3 days before their marriage and took place on the East India boat in Stockholm. This was an event where we only 150 people invited to celebrate our Royal Wedding with amazing food, Sweden’s most well-known singers, performances and all this where on stage on the boat. I also got the opportunity to tell about my designs, company for the Royal Family. It was an amazing experience and the Family is so lovely and I am so inspired by Crown Princess work and at the same time kindness and humanity.

But we often meet and hear many fantastic stories from people that have bought Cooee products or followed our brand for many years. They touch me very much as well.

What do you wish for you and the Cooee Design in the coming years? 

Today we have approx. 300 retailers and most of them are based in Sweden, Norway which is our biggest markets so far. We grow a lot in several other markets for instance Germany and the UK.
We have also got a great interest from many private buyers in France, which means another market in the future could be France.
So my dreams and goals is that Cooee keeps growing and finding new markets and platforms.

Thank you dear Catrine for this amazing and interesting insight. And of course congratulation to your new collection!

A beautiful outcome of collaboration between Cooee Design and the Swedish artist Kristiina Haataja are unique sculptures like duo BENEDICT & AMAL, Ollie or Olufemi and more others.

There are also new ceramics. I love them all, but mostly the Clover vase designed by Lars Tornøe for Cooee Design. Such a beautiful shape and nice colors.

This is probably one of my favorite pictures with the new sculptures. Do you like it?

My appreciation goes to the whole Cooee Design Team for this wonderful {DESIGN PORTRAIT} I enjoyed so much.

You too? Looking forward to your opinion on Instagram.

Greetings from France

Arminka aka Petit Sourire

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In collaboration with Cooee Design