Discovering Old Wooden Objects in Sweden
When Mary Tripoli left for Scandinavia, she had one mission: to see some old wooden objects. In this blog post, she takes us on a photo tour of some of the treasures she's seen on her travels.
Hello from Sweden! I’m writing from my phone, so more pictures than words in this entry. We’ve been to the Vasa Museum and Nordiska Museum in Stockholm. Now we are at Sätergläntan, the craft school in Dalarna. I’ve had one mission on this trip: to see some old wooden objects.
I’ve taken a million pictures, but I’ll just post a few special boxes for this post. (I am archiving many more photos in my Instagram stories if you’d like to see more. You’ll find food, chairs, scenery, and more @trecitta_handcrafts)
Lidded boxes:
One locking lidded box at Nordiska Museum. I think this is in beech wood:
Here are friction-fit boxes also from Nordiska:
I also spent a few hours at the small but mighty Sätergläntan archives, where I was able to handle and closely examine these!
This one was pretty big, it was very neat to see the inner rim angles on the locking mechanism:
This sweet painted example had a turned knob handle vs the rectangle-carved version. It was stuck closed, so I couldn’t see inside it:
As you can tell from my goofy face, I’m so happy to be doing this!
UPDATE… This post is a little late, so here are some more containers I’ve discovered on our journey away from Sätergläntan.
At the Vasternorrlands Museum, we accessed the museum archives. So many wonderful objects to examine! Several weeks ahead of our visit, we each sent links to things from www.digitalarchives.se.
I was greeted with a table crowded with amazing spoons, boxes and bowls!
Number 10315 was particularly lovely. It was quite big, and came from a VERY large tree. The patina on it is smooth and beautiful. What a thrill!
I was VERY smitten with one small puzzle box from 1721. It was in good shape, and it worked flawlessly. The museum person said it might have held shaving supplies. I couldn’t stop holding it! Here are photos and a link to a video of how it functions.
That is all for now. I hope to share more in a few days. I'm traveling on my own now and have been up to a lot of craft!