How a Swedish City Is Reigniting Ardour for Salt-glazed Ceramics

On a night in early August, my fiancée, Sherry, and I discovered ourselves eating within the shadow of one of many towering kilns on the southwestern coast of Sweden. Fortunately, it was out of fee, which made dinner way more snug. The previous ceramics manufacturing unit, the place tons of coal had been as soon as burned to warmth the furnaces to some 2,300 levels, is now the Salthallarna (“Salt Halls”), a group of eating places, retailers, and galleries within the small seaside city of Höganäs. 

After we completed a course of grilled langoustines bursting with saltwater taste, a employees member led us inside one of many kilns for a tour. The oven was so huge we may have match a dozen extra individuals with out feeling crowded. The partitions had been midnight-black from generations of soot. For years, the smoke from the ovens was so thick that the individuals of Höganäs wouldn’t cling their laundry open air throughout “glazing weeks.” Within the 1830s, the ceramists of Höganäs began including salt to the kilns throughout firing, which created an acid-resistant glaze and gave it a particular shine. The gorgeous and sensible salt-glazed mugs, tableware, and industrial items rapidly unfold throughout the continent, and Höganäs turned nearly as related to ceramics as Waterford, Eire, is with crystal. However with globalization got here outsourcing, and in 2008, the kilns went chilly. 

It appeared like ceramics had been a factor of the previous till 2022, when Höganäs launched an bold challenge to encourage a brand new technology: KKAM (which in Swedish stands for “Ceramics, Artwork, Studio, Museum”) features a main renovation of the practically hundred-year-old ceramics museum, in hopes of creating it a world-class vacation spot. The studio that sits on the location of the outdated ceramics manufacturing unit was expanded, and now gives extra lessons for the general public.

Sherry and I spent a weekend in Höganäs for a hands-on tour of the ceramics renaissance. We flew in to Copenhagen and took a practice to Helsingborg, the gateway metropolis to the largely rural Höganäs area. We stayed at Rusthållargården, a country inn that was constructed as a farm in 1675. Perched on a hill in Arild, a tiny village by the ocean, the 60-room resort and former website of a royal stables gives a retreat into easy nation life. On our first evening on the town, Sherry and I leaned in to the slower tempo and relaxed in our room, watching a protracted summer time sundown burst orange over the ocean.

“Cows!” I yelled. On a hill about 50 yards away, a half dozen of them had been fortunately munching grass. We’re metropolis individuals, and at any time when we see livestock, we should yell. 

The next morning, the resort supervisor, Christina Svennblad, defined that they let a neighboring farmer graze his cows and sheep on the resort grounds.

“The children prefer it. Plus it saves us having to mow the garden.” 

Astrid Sandberg, a ceramics teacher at KKAM, and her husband, Christer Bogren, a lifelong Höganäs resident, had been our guides for our go to, and so they took us for lunch at Ransvik Havsveranda, a bistro in close by Mölle that stands on the website of the “Sin in Mölle.” Within the late 1800s, Bogren defined, Swedes had damaged European social norms by permitting women and men to swim collectively. Quickly, vacationers from Berlin and Copenhagen flocked to this spot by the 1000’s for risqué coed bathing (albeit in full-body swimsuits). I had left my old style striped onesie at dwelling, however I loved a decadent lunch of skagenröra, a mayonnaise-based Swedish shrimp salad, on a contemporary croissant.

Afterward, we drove via Mölle’s harbor, the place the favored Grand Hôtel sits atop a hill, after which on to the stately Kullens lighthouse, which held a particular place for Sandberg and Bogren.

“That is the place we acquired married,” Sandberg defined. 

I imagined how stunning it will need to have been, in a room of glass partitions overlooking the Kattegat, the strait that runs between Sweden and Denmark.

The subsequent day, Sandberg and Bogren drove us to the museum to get some inspiration earlier than we began throwing clay. On the drive previous inexperienced landscapes we noticed numerous keramik indicators, indicating a small pottery studio or showroom. Sandberg mentioned that Helena Petersson, the proprietor of the tiny Arilds Hamnfik café in Arild, was a frequent customer to the KKAM studio, the place she made the mugs during which she served her espresso. Mölle Krukmakeri, a preferred restaurant by the harbor in Mölle, doubles as a store for native pottery. In Höganäs, ceramics are all over the place.

On the museum, we entered a sunlight-filled room that confirmed the development of the Höganäs model from the 1800s to the current. The placing centerpiece of the room was a show of Höganäs krus, with the signature two-handled jugs arrayed from tiny to huge. Strolling via the halls, we noticed the work of traditionally influential Swedish ceramists, reminiscent of Åke Holm, in addition to up to date artists, together with Jens Fänge. By the point we left, I used to be, certainly, bursting with inspiration. 

The issue: I didn’t know the very first thing about making pottery and have at all times been horrible at artwork lessons. However Sandberg assured me that may be no drawback in any respect. She confirmed us across the KKAM studio, which had not too long ago expanded from its humble beginnings with solely two pottery wheels to a sprawling advanced with 22 wheels, workspaces, school rooms, and a firing room. The environment was vigorous and welcoming, and we realized that the open studio occasions had been so widespread that it was exhausting to e-book a spot. We bumped into an expert artist who was displaying her work on the museum, in addition to a neighborhood hobbyist who’d rented a studio area for a couple of weeks throughout her staycation.

Inside our classroom, glossy steel lights overhead illuminated a protracted butcher’s block with 5 potter’s wheels. As we every sat down at one, Sandberg put us comfy, joking and discovering the proper pedagogical tone — encouraging with out infantilizing. She demonstrated easy methods to middle the clay on the wheel, moist it, scoop out a base, and stretch it out to type the partitions of a pot. When my clay began wobbling, she confirmed me easy methods to settle it down by pinching the highest of the wall. 

As my creation grew extra bowl-like, I began to really feel snug, and Sandberg steered that I “comply with the clay.” Simply an hour earlier, this could’ve gave the impression of half-baked Zen. However sitting in entrance of the spinning wheel, it made good sense. For nearly two centuries, individuals had adopted the clay on this very place; the clay knew the place to go. My palms moved up the wall of clean moist grey, and I quickly discovered myself staring down at a bowl — an actual factor that somebody may use in a kitchen with out embarrassment. 

I used to be feeling fairly good about myself till I noticed that Bogren had already completed two bowls and was placing the ending touches on an precise Höganäs krus.

“I took a pottery class in fifth grade,” he sheepishly defined.

“It’s terribly annoying,” Sandberg mentioned with amusing. “However he was born right here. And when you’re from Höganäs, ceramics are in your blood.” 

A model of this story first appeared within the October 2024 concern of Journey + Leisure underneath the headline “Breaking the Mould.”