She builds jigsaw puzzles with cultural history

Stina Ekelund works as a furniture conservator in a castle in Denmark. With gentle hands, she guards a piece of cultural history.

It is quite late in the evening when furniture conservator Stina Eklund’s neighbour calls at the door. The entire house smells! Are you baking?

No, it is sand from a Libyan desert.

Heated in a pan, the sand is burning thin pieces of maple veneer. They are receiving the exact millimetre-wide edge shading that provides a depth effect for the marquetry work that Stina Ekelund is doing. It is a replica of a sixteenth century coat of arms, commissioned by Kalmar Castle.

She specialises in marquetry – the technique of creating patterns and pictures using thin pieces of veneer that are glued to a surface. It is a kind of jigsaw puzzle using different kinds of wood, stone, bone, ivory, mother of pearl and tortoise shell; sometimes all at once.

It is almost three in the morning before the coat of arms is ready, secured between two sheets of Plexiglas.

The following morning, Stina is in a workshop at the Frederiksborg Castle, Hillerød, pouring a cup of coffee. The train from Copenhagen, where she lives, takes an hour. When the weather is warmer she cycles the 80 km return trip.

Stina’s regular job is as one of the museum’s three furniture conservators at the largest renaissance palace in Scandinavia, which is also Denmark’s national history
museum.

Two of the furniture conservators were educated at Linköping University, at Carl Malmsten Furniture Studies; traditionally operating from Stockholm. Stina Ekelund started studying there in 2001 while her colleague, Gitte Jörgensen, began in 1999. By that time they were already trained cabinetmakers.

The castle was built in the 1500s and the workshop is located in the oldest parts complete with thick, whitewashed walls and exposed wooden beams. However it is not particularly large considering the number of objects that the furniture conservators are expected to keep track of:

“Between four and six thousand, depending on how you count them”, says Stina Ekelund.

Large sheets of paper are scattered on the staff room’s simple wooden table where Stina Ekelund keeps jobs listed. Furniture in need of immediate care needs to be moved to exhibitions or to be lent out.

Prioritising requires knowledge and consideration. Restoration is balanced against accessibility for visitors, in that efforts to keep items in good condition are weighed against pressing urgent actions.

Frederiksborg sets out the framework for their work, with seasonal changes that reach into every corner of the castle – raw weather, single glazing and being difficult to heat.

“We take as many precautions as we can to maintain a constant temperature and level of humidity. We are constantly emphasising how important it is for the windows to have UV filters.”

That is under way but is expensive.

The castle was built as a pompous manifestation of power for Christian IV (1588-1648) and the Danish autocrats that followed. The symbolic value of the castle for the nation-state became particularly evident following the great castle fire in 1859, when practically the only things that remained intact were the outer walls and parts of the church. Nineteen years later, the castle had been rebuilt and reopened as a national history museum.

“The money came from J.C. Jacobsen, the founder of Carlsberg Breweries. The museum still operates from a fund that he set up.”

Stina Ekelund established her Danish museum contacts when she was doing work experience during her third term at the Conservation Department of the National Museum of Denmark. Her instructor told her about Frederiksborg, which led to a paper about the Danish master Hans Barchmann, who was responsible for the advanced marquetry in the castle’s church.

Stina complemented her degree with a Masters course at the conservation school at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen; this time with comparative studies of marquetry in Kalmar castle in Sweden. She kept up her contacts at Malmsten’s and analysed wood samples from marquetry in the modern laboratories in Stockholm.

“Using infrared spectroscopy, I wanted to see if the wood was stained or dyed using various fungi. I like the natural science approach; it provides new and objective knowledge.”

Following her studies, Stina took over a workshop amongst the antique dealers at Bredgade in Copenhagen. Two old cabinet makers worked at the workshop and there was a constant fog of tobacco smoke and an unconcealed surprise that she never wanted to start the day with a drink of Gammel Dansk.

Stina soon received a number of really exciting assignments. For example, the Design Museum gave her a writing desk from the 1700s made by the master carpenter Röntgen.

“It was an assignment that really required that I got my act together. I was quite happy until I realised that in the evenings I was locking up a piece of furniture worth something like 2 million Euro. Just the thought that something could happen...”

Without even flinching, Stina closed the workshop, worked in Venice for six months and was then signed up for a project at Rosenborg Castle in Denmark. There, she had to work extremely hard, restoring the narwhal tusk veneer on the 1671 Danish royal throne.

“About 2,000 hours’ work. The twisted pieces of veneer had to be softened up in humidity cabinets to be straightened and then be allowed to slowly dry again before they could be put back in to place.”

Stina Ekelund started working at Frederiksborg in 2008. Now, she is used to her castle domains. Where ordinary people mostly see the surface, Stina sees layer upon layer of stories,
new questions to be asked and challenging problems to be solved.

Perusing the exhibitions is like taking a walk through five centuries of European cultural history. There are traces of technical development and the exchange of knowledge; changes in fashion and the flow of ideas. There are also traces of the travelling cabinetmakers journeys through Europe with new pattern books in his pack.

Stina stops by a renaissance cabinet, a masterpiece made in a time of conquest in Europe, displaying clear signs that the owner had access to the entire world.

“With exotic types of wood from Africa and South America. Jet black ebony, snake wood in patterns like snakeskin or semi-transparent tortoise shell backed by coloured paper.”

In drawers and secret drawers hide treasures brought home that few could afford.

Furniture conservation is a sophisticated blend of detective work, normal natural science, skill and a kind of practical furniture archaeology. There is still much that is unexplored.

“It is impossible to get by just with theory. You have to feel your way forward. It is when I work on the piece that I see how the original piece must have been made.”

The discovery of details that do not match, the chain reaction of thoughts that follow, the new conclusions that need to be drawn are all a fantastic part of the job, according to Stina:

“Then I’m completely exhilarated! I love the geekiness about techniques.”

Stina Ekelund manages not only a cultural heritage but also the knowledge of its coming into being, the history itself.

“And everything we fix must always be able to be returned to its original condition. Everything we do has to be documented. And if nobody notices our work, then we have done it really well."

Text Gunilla Pravitz
Photo Göran Billeson
From LiU magazine no 2 2011

• Name Stina Ekelund
• Place of residence Copenhagen, Denmark
• Education Furniture conservationist, graduated 2004. Masters training in Copenhagen.
• Work Conservationist at the renaissance castle Frederikborg, approximately 80 km north of Copenhagen.
• Hobbies A great deal of exercising, lots of reading, distance courses in art history.
• Future plans There will probably be a doctoral thesis eventually and I would love to return to the new Malmstens’ building on Lidingö!
• Good memory The walk down Katarinavägen after the admissions interview. I was accepted. Yes! Now it begins!