The Furniture Design Study Tour: A True Adventure

The study tour was insane! The Furniture Design study tour goes to Sweden and Western Denmark, though the tour is only two countries there is never a dull moment. The study tour is a field trip that features many locations that provide hands-on learning for the students. Something that was required was the taking of notes, but specifically 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 to Sweden, it was a day of pretty much only driving with two stops at more 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 only 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, 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, 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 totally being a nerd the entire time.

The last morning in Stockholm was pretty special because it was my Birthday. 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 then by fate my favorite musical ‘Chicago’ was playing at the local theater, 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, the tour was very interesting as there were so many tragedies in the Ribe village, we 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 Klints Faaborg chair, designed for the museum. Faaborg was the last stop and the class traveled back to Copanhagen, ending a great tour.