Cool School
“Having a purpose, you know, is everything.”
A recent profile of Swedish ceramicist Ingegerg Råman and her husband filmmaker Claes Soderquist at their country home ends with this line, and it has been resonating with me.
The story opens focused on the place itself.
A converted schoolhouse - originally built for the children of farmworkers on an agricultural estate in Sweden's Skåne province - is now the private refuge of these two aging artists wanting spaces to make things.
For Ingegerg, who made a name for herself as a design collaborator with IKEA, that space takes the form of a ceramics studio.
For Claes, a film director, it is a room for his editing table.
As the article notes, the look and feel of the place is minimal, which both reflects their work and spurs it. But it is also warmed by artifacts from their lives together. Objects they both made and collected over the years.
Hear a collection of Ingegerg's ceramics and glass of "uncommon beauty". There a mismatched set of chairs painted a brightly red by Claes.
The schoolhouse was renovated by Stockholm-based architects Claesson Koivisto Rune. The site plan sets apart areas for Ingegerg and Claes to work separately, while also providing spaces in which the couple can live together.
I can just imagine the two of them, dressed in black, stopping work at 10 am for their morning fika - maybe a coffee and a cardamom bun. And then slowly hustling back to their work areas after the break.
Two bright lights.
The article was written by Nancy Hass, a reporter for T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and photographed by Swedish lensman Mikael Olsson.
Find out more, here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/11/t-magazine/ingegerd-raman-claes-soderquist-sweden.html
https://www.remodelista.com/posts/craftwork-for-the-masses-inegerd-ramans-new-collection-for-ikea/
