Family Ties

In the vaulted cellar of a building dating from 1648, Erica Larsson is making a chair. Bent over a small workbench, wearing a black apron over a blue T-shirt, she picks up a length of rattan about an inch in diameter, and locks one end of it into a vise. She ignites a gas flame, playing it carefully along the wood so as not to scorch it, until the heat makes it flexible. Pulling firmly, like a barmaid pulling a pint, she bends the rattan to a graceful angle and applies a damp cloth to cool it and fix the shape. A few minutes later, the rattan comes out of the vise and is added to a growing pile of identically bent pieces.

Erica makes and repairs rattan furniture in this workshop, Larsson Korgmakare, located down a cobbled alleyway close to the waterfront in Stockholm’s Old Town and marked only by a faded sign with the image of a pointing hand. She shares the two small, low-ceilinged rooms, which once stored coal for ships, with Lasse Jildetag, her colleague of 34 years, and Tom Hiddleston, a dachshund given his name by Erica’s teenage daughter. Cofounded by Erica’s great-grandfather Knut-Wilhelm Larsson in 1903, the company is the last of its kind in Scandinavia, and one of Europe’s few remaining manufacturers of handmade rattan. Erica uses century-old tools inherited from her forebears and designs drawn by her grandfather in the 1940s and ’50s. The only concession to modernity is a nail gun, as it saves so much time.

Erica’s grandfather Jon inherited the workshop from his father, who had founded it with his brother, Emil. Jon was good friends with Josef Frank, the Austrian designer who in the 1930s created many famous pieces for Sweden’s legendary interiors store Svenskt Tenn. “They were both quite shy, quiet people and they had a good connection,” says Erica. “My grandfather was also friends with Estrid Ericson, who founded Svenskt Tenn.”

Later the business passed to Erica’s father, Stieg, who gave up his job as a perfume importer to take it on. Erica began here in 1989. At the time she was working (unhappily) in an office, but when her parents went off to Asia to source raw materials she stepped in — and never left. To this day, Larsson Korgmakare makes furniture for Svenskt Tenn, in addition to producing items under its own brand and repairing other manufacturers’ items (the workshop is filled with Hans Wegner chairs needing some TLC).

To make one chair from scratch might take two days, but working together, Erica and Lasse can complete a batch of 10 in a week. The legs and frame of the chairs are fashioned from the thicker pieces of rattan, while the seats and backs are usually woven from Chinese seagrass or Danish paper cord. Prices for chairs start around 9000 kronor ($800).

One of Estrid Ericson’s guiding principles — which hugely influenced modern Swedish design — was that furniture should be easy to pick up and move around, so the lightweight rattan pieces from Larsson Korgmakare were ideal. In Sweden, wicker furniture (“wicker” refers to the style, while rattan is the material) enjoyed a heyday from the early 1900s, when wealthy Stockholmers started building second homes in the nearby archipelago, through to the 1930s. It was used for everything from hand mirrors to tables. Today Larsson Korgmakare still makes some side tables, but chairs are its main product, fashioned with rattan from Malaysia, where it is cultivated alongside rubber trees. Wonderfully light and strong, rattan ages well, so it is now being discovered by younger design enthusiasts.

“There’s been a generational change,” says Erica. “Young people find stuff at auction or in their grandparents’ houses and they come to us for repairs. I think that’s fun because they appreciate the craftsmanship, and rattan keeps well over the years so it’s worth repairing.”

The only downside to this resurgence in popularity is that it has driven up prices for wicker pieces. “I used to buy my great-grandfather and my grandfather’s furniture when it was at auction,” says Erica. “I thought it would be good to have a sample, but today it’s so expensive. Sometimes it costs more than buying a new one, but I understand why: It’s good quality.”

As the fourth generation of her family to lead the company, Erica values the past but, of course, has an eye on the future. There may yet be a fifth generation to shape the furniture at Larsson Korgmakare, as her 17-year-old daughter is in design school. “I hope someone will take over, as it would be lovely for the company to survive.”

Stephen Whitlock is the author of A Hedonist’s Guide to Stockholm. Originally from North Yorkshire, he has lived in Sweden since 2002.