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 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 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 employees member led us inside one of many kilns for a tour. The oven was so huge we might have match a dozen extra folks 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 folks of Höganäs wouldn’t dangle 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 attractive and sensible salt-glazed mugs, tableware, and industrial items rapidly unfold throughout the continent, and Höganäs grew to become virtually as related to ceramics as Waterford, Eire, is with crystal. However with globalization got here outsourcing, and in 2008, the kilns went chilly. 

It seemed like ceramics had been a factor of the previous till 2022, when Höganäs launched an bold undertaking 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 The studio that sits on the positioning of the outdated ceramics manufacturing unit was expanded, and now affords extra courses for the general public.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 web site of a royal stables affords 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 season 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 folks, and each 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 youngsters 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 web site 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 school striped onesie at house, 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 obtained 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 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 through which she served her espresso. Mölle Krukmakeri, a well-liked restaurant by the harbor in Mölle, doubles as a store for native pottery. In Höganäs, ceramics are in every single place.

On the museum, we entered a sunlight-filled room that confirmed the development of the Höganäs type from the 1800s to the current. The hanging centerpiece of the room was a show of Höganäs krus, with the signature two-handled jugs arrayed from tiny to large. Strolling via the halls, we noticed the work of traditionally influential Swedish ceramists, similar 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 courses. However Sandberg assured me that will be no drawback in any respect. She confirmed us across the KKAM studio, which had just lately expanded from its humble beginnings with solely two pottery wheels to a sprawling complicated with 22 wheels, workspaces, lecture rooms, and a firing room. The ambiance was full of life and welcoming, and we realized that the open studio instances had been so standard that it was onerous to e book a spot. We bumped into an expert artist who was exhibiting her work on the museum, in addition to a neighborhood hobbyist who’d rented a studio area for a number of weeks throughout her staycation.

Inside our classroom, smooth steel lights overhead illuminated a protracted butcher’s block with 5 potter’s wheels. As we every sat down at one, Sandberg put us relaxed, joking and discovering the right pedagogical tone — encouraging with out infantilizing. She demonstrated the right way to middle 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 the right way 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 instructed that I “observe the clay.” Simply an hour earlier, this is able to’ve gave the impression of half-baked Zen. However sitting in entrance of the spinning wheel, it made excellent sense. For nearly two centuries, folks had adopted the clay on this very place; the clay knew the place to go. My arms moved up the wall of easy moist grey, and I quickly discovered myself staring down at a bowl — an actual factor that somebody might 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 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 challenge of Journey + Leisure beneath the headline “Breaking the Mildew.”