Historically, very little design history has been written from Småland, despite the fact that many design objects have been produced there. Instead, design history has been formulated and decided by the institutions, museums, and universities of the big cities, which often share a traditional perspective with a focus on the products and the individual designer. Through such an approach, other stories are at risk of disappearing from the historiography.
Round Here presents many different histories from a specific place. These are stories that today can be found in local heritage museums, in civil society, museums, and local historical networks. Together, in the exhibition, we write a craft and design history with the whole of Småland – a diverse story about different everyday lives, about material skills and crafts, and about life in the villages. Round Here is about design and craft that are not tied to purchasing power, products, and abstract perceptions of beauty and ugliness.
The exhibition shows wooden furniture that challenges the norms of industrial society, fantastic art glass, tableware travelling from Poland to a display cabinet in Högsby, a Småland-Iraqi story about a spectacular hotel, personal idioms in wirework, Småland stories about Romani people, mapping of children's places, glass workers who writes their own history and the weaving shed's content and creativity – all of it are stories about design and it's all around here, in Småland.
The exhibition is produced by Designarkivet and summarises the three-year development project (Re-)Learning the Archive which Designarkivet has run together with craft- and design historian Christina Zetterlund, who is also the curator of the exhibition.
Exhibitors
Magnus Bärtås & Behzad Khosravi Noori, Annika Elmqvist, Makda Embaie, Frantzwagner Sällskapet, Hönsalottas Luffarmuseum, Kalmar Läns Hemslöjd, MADAM snickeri och restaurering, Evelina Mohei, Tuomo Nieminen, Ann Rydh, Studio Goja, Rosa Tolnov Clausen & Daniele Burlando.
About (Re-)Learning the Archive
(Re-)Learning the Archive is a three-year development project run by Designarkivet in Nybro, Småland, and financed by the Swedish Arts Council and Region Kalmar. The project has developed and tested a method for how we can expand the design history writing through an inclusive, listening, and learning practice. (Re-)Learning the Archive is part of Designarkivets long-term work to open up the archive to a general audience.
