Study Tour was insane! Our Furniture Design Study Tour went to Sweden and Western Denmark and there was never a dull moment.
Study Tour is a field trip that features many locations that provide hands-on learning for the students. Along the way, we were required to take notes, specifically as sketches and drawings. With each location we stopped at, I drew architecture, furniture, and x-ray drawings of joinery and hardware.
The tour started by heading north from Copenhagen to Sweden. It was a day of pretty much only driving with two stops at furniture showrooms, design labs, and showrooms along the way. A really cool shop we visited was the shop of Swedese, they are known for the Lamino Chair and many other handmade products. We got a tour of their shop and I nerded out about their specialized hydraulic fabric tensioning machine specially made for the Lamino Chair, as well as their veneer lamination molding machines. From there, we kept on moving north.
A special town we drove through was Husqvarna. It is a tiny town with a rich history in machines. The Husqvarna factory is what built the town, and they are known for their heaters, lawn mowers, and especially sewing machines (I have one!).
Husqvarna is special to me because it is the origin of my family. Before my visit to Europe, my family prepared me for a quest. I was given a picture from 1890 of my great-great grandpa’s house and was told to find it… and find it I did.
I brought a friend with me on my quest. I knocked on the door and we explained to the home owner what we were doing and she was totally cool. She invited us to see her backyard and some of the inside of her house. She said the historical people that lived in the house worked in the Husqvarna factory. They were not just workers, they were foremen and machinists. To thank her I gave her a copy of the original photo as she is now part of the house’s history too. She was very happy and said she’s going to blow it up and frame it.
After Husqvarna, we spent two nights in Stockholm. As a class we went to historical sites with a history of design, and in our free time my classmate and I split up from the group and hit up as many palaces and churches as possible. The historical architecture was some of the best I’ve ever seen and, as a student with an art history minor, I was a total nerd the entire time.
The last morning in Stockholm was pretty special because it was my birthday. To celebrate, I got up at 4 am that morning and started painting the beautiful canal. I went back to the hotel for breakfast, we hit up another design lab (got free fabric samples), and we got on a plane for Aarhus, Denmark.
Aarhus is a city of Vikings.
During free time, my friend and I explored the Viking museum and then by fate, my favorite musical ‘Chicago’ was playing at the local theater, so we spontaneously bought tickets for the show. The production was exquisite!
From Aarhus, we drove to Ribe, the oldest town in Denmark. There was a tour led by the Night Watchman, who led us through the many tragedies throughout history in village. We even saw a burial mound with 3,000 plague victims underneath it. In the morning I got up at 4 am once more to do plein air of the oldest house in Ribe. Built in 1100, it has survived plagues, floods, fires, and still functions as a house today.
After Ribe we went to Faaborg to gaze upon the exact replicas of Kaare Klint’s Faaborg Chair, designed for the museum. Faaborg was the last stop and the class traveled back to Copanhagen, ending a great tour.
