As printed on a flyer about the institution:
Handarbetets Vänner (The Association of Friends of Textile Art) was founded in 1874 by a group of women with Sophie Adlersparre as the driving force. The founders wanted to preserve the aesthetics and craft skills of traditional textile art. Over the years most of the country's leading artists have worked in close collaboration with the weavers and embroiderers in our studio.
HV has acted as a versatile centre of high quality textile manufacture using traditional techniques. HVs clients are equally artists and private individuals. The genuine feeling for different materials and for craft skills displayed by the staff, as well as an eye for colour and form, makes it possible for HV to realize almost any artistic idea. Artists collaborating with HV are not only textile artists but painters, graphic artists and sculptors.
HV STUDIO has produced many of the leading works of textile art in Sweden both for pulic buildings and for private homes. It is the country's largest studio for the production of original textile art, theatre curtains, carpets and furnishing fabrics for both public buildings and for the home. The most famous work produced in the studio is Elisabet Hasselberg Olsson's tapestry "Memory of a landscape" which hangs in the Swedish parliament.
HV LICIUM works exclusively with
ecclesiastical textiles. Founded in 1904 by Agnes
Branting and Mimi Börjesson. It was headed by
Agnes Branting until her death in 1930. Sofia Widen, Edna
Martin and Asa Bengtsson then took over as Artistic
Directors. That post has been held since 1997 by
Marie-Louise Sjöblom.
HV LICIUM has been part of HV STUDIO since 1952.
Babro Nilsson, 1961, Marcus
church, Stockholm
Ruth Hallberg, Licium, 1917,
Vreta convent church, Ostergotland
