linladan

Linladan is Swedish for flax barn: 
The threads on this website are from flax grown and spun in the heart of Sweden's textile industrial area in the 1960's. As the factory closed down, the remaining yarn was hidden away in a haberdashery stockroom for decades. 
Finding and learning about Linblomman linen threads led me to old Swedish embroidery companies, one of them an especially intriguing textile house called Nordiska, established in 1879, and it's lost archive. This major collection of original drawings, pattern charts and embroidered samples has now been found, saved in an old linen factory, just outside Sweden's "textile town". In the past two years, apart from spending countless hours on a floor in a room full of marvellous mid century patterns, I have met and spoken to a few of the artists that worked for Nordiska, many of them still practising textile artists, some well into their eighties. All are wonderful women, strong, creative, with a lot of knowledge. Over this year we'll continue to work together to publish more of the Nordiska patterns. 

In 2020, our next archive exhibition will take place, a five week visit here in the UK. More news shortly!

An old Scandinavian proverb tells "Ull blir mull och lin blir gull", (Wool becomes dust, flax becomes gold) and we have found the latter to be true: linen stays beautiful and strong, ready for stitching now or in 50 years.