Rosemaling and What to Buy

This module reconstructs two Vesterheim Folk Art School classes. Nancy Odalen’s Telemark-Style Rosemaling starts on a Thursday evening “to give you time to purchase your wooden wear and paint the background,” then paints “a 16" scooped bowl using a Telemark design that is inspired by a piece found in Norway at the Norske Folk Museum in Oslo,” mainly flowers with “the lovely asymmetrical flow that typically represents Telemark” ¹. Nancy Schmidt’s Rosemaling in the Os Style paints an Os tray and encourages students to design their own ². Vesterheim’s online fundamentals class drills “the flowing C- and S-strokes, teardrops, scrolls, and leaves” ³. The class plans aren’t published; this follows the sources cited.

Where rosemaling comes from

Rosemaling is the rural decorative painting of 1700s and 1800s Norway, done by craftsmen outside the guilds, strongest in Hallingdal and Telemark. From the 1760s rococo C-forms produced a playful, asymmetrical style that fills fields of any shape freely, with bold, free brushwork. The Telemark masters include Ola Hansson, Thomas Luraas, Knut Mevasstaul, and Hans Glittenberg. Painters bought pigments as sticks or stones, ground them by hand, and bound them in linseed oil ⁴.

Hansson’s ale bowl of 1788 at the Norsk Folkemuseum is 63 cm across ⁵.

Telemark and Os

Telemark: motifs aren’t symmetrical; leaves and flowers spring or wind out of a scroll, in colors more transparent than dense ⁶. It is “one of few asymmetrical rosemaling styles, characterized by scrolls and branches spanning out from a root center”; transparent Telemark uses paint “thin enough to see through,” and American Telemark works “wet-on-wet” with “whiplash movements of the brush” ⁷.

Os, from Hordaland south of Bergen ²: fewer flowers and more leafwork, symmetrical or not, often with geometric forms, on red, black, or white grounds ⁶. Mary Schliep describes abstracted flowers, “heavy line-work for veins,” and “less dimensional” shading ⁸.

Woodenware

Vesterheim’s store sells basswood scoop plates from 6 to 16 inches (the 16-inch is $21) and shallow 16-inch bowls ($40) ⁹. Start on a 12-inch plate if this is your first piece.

Paint, brushes, and medium

North House’s shaded Telemark class paints in oils with a palette of Ivory Black, Titanium White, Venetian Red, Prussian Blue, Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber, Terre Verte, Raw Sienna, Caput Mortuum, and Yellow Ochre, with #2 liner and #2 and #4 filbert brushes ¹⁰. Its Os class adds brighter colors, Cadmium Yellow Light and Deep, Thalo Blue, Crimson Lake or Alizarin, and Cadmium Red Light, noting “these paints are not typical Rosemaling colors,” with a #1 liner, #2 to #6 filberts, walnut alkyd medium, and odorless thinner ¹¹. In 1964 Gladys Fossum of Racine suggested Prussian blue, vermilion, cadmium yellow, burnt umber, burnt sienna, black, and white, with sable brushes in sizes 1 and 3 or 4 ¹².

Try it

Paint a practice board with two coats of dark acrylic now: masonite or heavy cardboard about 12 by 15 inches, as North House uses ¹⁰. You’ll fill it with strokes in lesson 2 before touching the plate.