The new issue of the Norwegian fine craft magazine The Vessel has a garden theme, the perfect setting for an article on Frida Hansen and the passion for gardens that led to decades of woven floral images. The article, “Frida Hansen’s Rose Garden: A Tribute to Feminine Crafts,” was written by Adine Lexow, exactly the right scholar for the subject. Lexow currently has a three-year research fellowship at the Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo. In her doctoral project, “Frida Hansen: Weaver, Gardener, Artist, Woman,” she will explore how Hansen’s intense fascination with flowers and dedicated work with gardens influenced her Art Nouveau-inspired designs and weaving practice.
In her article, Lexow closely investigates one of Hansen’s monumental tapestries, I Rosenhavn (In the Rose Garden), and relates it to Hansen’s lifelong love of gardens and deep knowledge of flowers. If “Write what you know” is good advice for writers, “Weave what you know” could describe Hansen’s artistic life. Her knowledge of the natural world, plants, and garden design provided inspiration for decades. Lexow writes, “Her monumental tapestries and her other interior weavings are also full of flowers, with roses appearing most frequently. This includes everything from different coloured imported and domesticated garden roses, wild roses, ‘farmers roses’ inspired by Norwegian rose-painting, and traditional geometric åttebladsroser (eight-petalled roses).”
Lexow is a remarkable researcher. She found a beautiful quote about Hansen’s deep-seated need to be surrounded by flowers in a 1902 letter. Hansen wrote to her friend and colleague Herman Schirmer:
“I am determined now to get myself a small Home or a Studio where I can be surrounded by Flowers — remember the Traditions I have, two Grandmothers who were both passionate Garden lovers and Flower growers — one artistic and the other practical. Once, I should get the Opportunity to show You the Remains of the old Gardens at Hindal (Mother’s Mother’s) – then you would surely gain Respect for the Grand-Daughter. Yes, I must now have Flowers around me — I must now get what I have longed for all these Years.”
She succeeded in that goal. At Bestumhus, her home built in 1903, Hansen created beautiful gardens where many of the plants and bushes from that era still grow.
Lexow’s perceptive analysis of In the Rose Garden in relation to garden design revealed aspects of the tapestry I had not noticed before. For example, she describes the blue areas in the border as “symmetrically constructed oval-shaped water pools … framing the central motif.” Hansen created this border, Lexow explains, “to mark that the rose garden was only a smaller part of a larger park facility with flower beds, lawns, and fountains.”
This is a beautiful article, and I recommend reading it.
Frida Hansen’s Rose Garden: A Tribute to Feminine Crafts
I look forward to more articles by Lexow based on her current research. She has also been studying Frida Hansen’s natural dye recipes, and was able to experiment with them during a fellowship in Germany. Last fall she attended my transparent tapestry weaving workshop at the Norsk Folkemuseum and told the class about some of that research. I found it fascinating that some of the ingredients specified in Hansen’s dye recipes are now considered toxic and required Lexow to mix the dyes under a hood, reaching her hands in through special protected sleeves. I am eager for Lexow to write more about Frida Hansen’s dyeing, and to see what other insights emerge from her close study of Hansen’s materials, methods, and artistic world.
