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 rather more comfy. The previous ceramics manufacturing facility, the place tons of coal have been as soon as burned to warmth the furnaces to some 2,300 levels, is now the Salthallarna (“Salt Halls”), a set of eating places, outlets, and galleries within the small seaside city of Höganäs. 

After we completed a course of grilled langoustines bursting with saltwater taste, a workers member led us inside one of many kilns for a tour. The oven was so huge we may have match a dozen extra folks with out feeling crowded. The partitions have been midnight-black from generations of soot. For years, the smoke from the ovens was so thick that the folks of Höganäs wouldn’t cling their laundry outdoor 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 attractive 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 have been a factor of the previous till 2022, when Höganäs launched an bold venture to encourage a brand new technology: KKAM (which in Swedish stands for “Ceramics, Artwork, Studio, Museum”) features a main renovation of the almost hundred-year-old ceramics museum, in hopes of constructing it a world-class vacation spot. The studio that sits on the positioning of the outdated ceramics manufacturing facility was expanded, and now presents extra lessons for the general public.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 prepare 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 lodge and former website of a royal stables presents a retreat into easy nation life. On our first night time 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 have been fortunately munching grass. We’re metropolis folks, and every time we see livestock, we should yell. 

The next morning, the lodge supervisor, Christina Svennblad, defined that they let a neighboring farmer graze his cows and sheep on the lodge 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, have been our guides for our go to, they usually 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 hundreds for risqué coed bathing (albeit in full-body swimsuits). I had left my old school striped onesie at residence, however I loved a decadent lunch of skagenröra, a mayonnaise-based Swedish shrimp salad, on a contemporary croissant.

Afterward, we drove by 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 bought married,” Sandberg defined. 

I imagined how lovely it should 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 stated 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 through 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 in all places.

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 by the halls, we noticed the work of traditionally influential Swedish ceramists, akin to 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 downside 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 energetic and welcoming, and we discovered that the open studio occasions have been so standard that it was arduous to e-book a spot. We bumped into an expert artist who was exhibiting her work on the museum, in addition to an area hobbyist who’d rented a studio house 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 find out how to heart the clay on the wheel, moist it, scoop out a base, and stretch it out to kind the partitions of a pot. When my clay began wobbling, she confirmed me find out how to settle it down by pinching the highest of the wall. 

As my creation grew extra bowl-like, I began to really feel comfy, and Sandberg prompt that I “observe the clay.” Simply an hour earlier, this may’ve gave the impression of half-baked Zen. However sitting in entrance of the spinning wheel, it made good sense. For nearly two centuries, folks had adopted the clay on this very place; the clay knew the place to go. My fingers moved up the wall of easy 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 stated with fun. “However he was born right here. And if you happen to’re from Höganäs, ceramics are in your blood.” 

A model of this story first appeared within the October 2024 subject of Journey + Leisure below the headline “Breaking the Mildew.”