love at first sight: the heteka in the attic

I have thought for some time that it would be much more convenient for day-to-day use to have our spare mattress in the library, rather than the enormous sofa in extremely bad shape that is currently there until we manage to get rid of it*. We don't have anything to put the spare mattress on, though, so while it's nicer for an overnight guest than the floor, it's not really ideal 'hanging out in the library' furniture.

Until when we were last at Ängisbacka helping my mother-in-law move things around in her attic, I saw, and fell in love with, THIS: a vintage steel heteka.

As Wikipedia and Wikisanakirja inform us on their Finnish sites, a heteka is a steel bedframe with springs, so called after the company Helsingin Teräshuonekalutehdas (Helsinki Steel Furniture Factory), founded 1932 by Kalle Kärkkäinen, and the most successful manufacturer of the common and extremely popular steel-frame hideaway beds before WW2. Here at the National Museum via Wikipedia.

I had neither heard of them nor seen them before; I just said "What is it?" and "It's so CUTE! It's so industrial and weird!" ( Read more... )