Capellagården – crafting courses and exhibition
Another high light from my summer holyday at Öland was a visit at Capellagården an independent, residential school for creative work founded almost fifty years ago by Professor Carl Malmstenin in the village of Vickleby on the edge of an extensive heath known as Stora Alvaret on the southern end of the island just off the Baltic coast. As you can imagine it’s a wonderful, unique and calm location – a place where you can loose yourself in your crafting passion, and that’s the explicit idea behind Capellagården: Living, working, studying and experiencing “hand and mind in vital collaboration” and to “unite beauty and function in crafts”.
The school offers three-year courses in textile craft and design, cabinet making and furniture design, ceramics and even ecological gardening as well as shorter summer courses. Originally it was meant as a meeting place for young people from Sweden but today it has developed into an international meeting place with students from many different countries.
Every summer Capellagården arranges a beautiful exhibition and sale of handicrafts, furniture, textiles and ceramics that have been made at the school in the course of the year. The exhibition is held in the old school by Vickleby Church and of course it always attracts a large numbers of visitors.
I can warmly recommend a visit there if you ever go to Öland.
April 26th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
Wow-how wonderful. Thank you for your interesting report and links. I wish there was something similar in Australia. We have some seasonal live in workshops for crafters (eg 1-2 weeks at a time) but nowhere that is a live in community of people studying their crafts.
April 30th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
Loved this article. I’m curious about the dying going on in the photos, was this workshop teaching the process of using wode? (ancient plant dye)