Slojd: The Swedish Art of Wood and Textile Handicraft
A little comment about the artist and writer herself…
This is a woman of many skills. She has trained in textiles and even more exactly, men’s tailoring. Yet she teaches plant dyeing, woodcarving, weaving, textile object building, slow stitch skills….she cannot be defined. Let’s just say she does craft.
The book title meaning…
Sloid is manual training, the creation of something with ones’ hands. It is a subject Swedish children grasp from a young age, partaken at school. It is traditional, yet teaches those directly featuring it within their lives with a form of self sufficiency, which formulates in courage and conviction.
Having made a little pre-research - I can reccomend visiting her website. The book section where she explains how each title came about is worth reading as it makes it easier to then understand where each title is coming from.
Slojd came about as a mixed craft book, due to her writing many varied articles for other publishing assignments. It must have felt then an obvious transition, accumulating all of this knowledge and experiance into this volume.
What can it be now?
Throughout this title, this author encourages us to activate a basic task - the use of ones’ hands to push for visual creation. This can be a source of self meaning, self worth….
What does this book contain?
Eighteen projects, all of which are settled with enough support to reach the finish, yet not so rule driven as to not allow for our own personal likes and dislikes.
It is not often you get a book on both wood and textiles. To be honest, I doubt if most textile artists would have had any experiance using wood and visa versa. Yet this coonection is exciting, I felt as if I was buying into a culture and a life style. I love going to Hygge style galleries and cafes, we do not have to venture to Sweden to experience this place - places and the feel of them can be where ever we are and by using this book and not only its projects but the imagery behind the project - we can be the life behind the pages, thanks to Numuller’s guidence.
Favorite projects?
Some were expected, for example a cushion cover. But others lesser so - I loved the wooden carving of a hook for a wall (see page 119) and the idea of using materials with less air time normally, like nettles. I had tried nettle cheese, but here we learn how to make thread from this often seen as weed! (page 109)
Final thoughts
This book to me, is healing. Why? It is comfort. No, I am not Swedish, I do not ‘feel’ the culture as if it was my own - but I want to.
The way of life which is vocalised through this book, seems quaint, traditional, yet so healthy - we all need a piece of it.