How a Swedish Town Is Reigniting Passion for Salt-glazed Ceramics

On an evening in early August, my fiancée, Sherry, and I found ourselves dining in the shadow of one of the towering kilns on the southwestern coast of Sweden. Happily, it was out of commission, which made dinner much more comfortable. The former ceramics factory, where tons of coal were once burned to heat the furnaces to some 2,300 degrees, is now the Salthallarna (“Salt Halls”), a collection of restaurants, shops, and galleries in the small seaside town of Höganäs. 

After we finished a course of grilled langoustines bursting with saltwater flavor, a staff member led us inside one of the kilns for a tour. The oven was so big we could have fit a dozen more people without feeling crowded. The walls were midnight-black from generations of soot. For years, the smoke from the ovens was so thick that the people of Höganäs wouldn’t hang their laundry outdoors during “glazing weeks.” In the 1830s, the ceramists of Höganäs started adding salt to the kilns during firing, which created an acid-resistant glaze and gave it a special shine. The beautiful and practical salt-glazed mugs, tableware, and industrial goods quickly spread across the continent, and Höganäs became almost as associated with ceramics as Waterford, Ireland, is with crystal. But with globalization came outsourcing, and in 2008, the kilns went cold. 

It looked like ceramics were a thing of the past until 2022, when Höganäs launched an ambitious project to inspire a new generation: KKAM (which in Swedish stands for “Ceramics, Art, Studio, Museum”) includes a major renovation of the nearly hundred-year-old ceramics museum, in hopes of making it a world-class destination. The studio that sits on the site of the old ceramics factory was expanded, and now offers more classes for the public.

Sherry and I spent a weekend in Höganäs for a hands-on tour of the ceramics renaissance. We flew in to Copenhagen and took a train to Helsingborg, the gateway city to the largely rural Höganäs region. We stayed at Rusthållargården, a rustic inn that was built as a farm in 1675. Perched on a hill in Arild, a tiny village by the sea, the 60-room hotel and former site of a royal stables offers a retreat into simple country life. On our first night in town, Sherry and I leaned in to the slower pace and relaxed in our room, watching a long summer sunset burst orange over the sea.

“Cows!” I yelled. On a hill about 50 yards away, a half dozen of them were happily munching grass. We are city people, and whenever we see livestock, we must yell. 

The following morning, the hotel manager, Christina Svennblad, explained that they let a neighboring farmer graze his cows and sheep on the hotel grounds.

“The kids like it. Plus it saves us having to mow the lawn.” 

Astrid Sandberg, a ceramics instructor at KKAM, and her husband, Christer Bogren, a lifelong Höganäs resident, were our guides for our visit, and they took us for lunch at Ransvik Havsveranda, a bistro in nearby Mölle that stands at the site of the “Sin in Mölle.” In the late 1800s, Bogren explained, Swedes had broken European social norms by allowing men and women to swim together. Soon, tourists from Berlin and Copenhagen flocked to this spot by the thousands for risqué coed bathing (albeit in full-body swimsuits). I had left my old-fashioned striped onesie at home, but I enjoyed a decadent lunch of skagenröra, a mayonnaise-based Swedish shrimp salad, on a fresh croissant.

Afterward, we drove through Mölle’s harbor, where the popular Grand Hôtel sits atop a hill, and then on to the stately Kullens lighthouse, which held a special place for Sandberg and Bogren.

“This is where we got married,” Sandberg explained. 

I imagined how beautiful it must have been, in a room of glass walls overlooking the Kattegat, the strait that runs between Sweden and Denmark.

The next day, Sandberg and Bogren drove us to the museum to get some inspiration before we started throwing clay. On the drive past green landscapes we saw countless keramik signs, indicating a small pottery studio or showroom. Sandberg said that Helena Petersson, the proprietor of the tiny Arilds Hamnfik café in Arild, was a frequent visitor to the KKAM studio, where she made the mugs in which she served her coffee. Mölle Krukmakeri, a popular restaurant by the harbor in Mölle, doubles as a shop for local pottery. In Höganäs, ceramics are everywhere.

At the museum, we entered a sunlight-filled room that showed the progression of the Höganäs style from the 1800s to the present. The striking centerpiece of the room was a display of Höganäs krus, with the signature two-handled jugs arrayed from tiny to massive. Walking through the halls, we saw the work of historically influential Swedish ceramists, such as Åke Holm, as well as contemporary artists, including Jens Fänge. By the time we left, I was, indeed, bursting with inspiration. 

The problem: I didn’t know the first thing about making pottery and have always been terrible at art classes. But Sandberg assured me that would be no problem at all. She showed us around the KKAM studio, which had recently expanded from its humble beginnings with only two pottery wheels to a sprawling complex with 22 wheels, workspaces, classrooms, and a firing room. The atmosphere was lively and welcoming, and we learned that the open studio times were so popular that it was hard to book a spot. We ran into a professional artist who was showing her work at the museum, as well as a local hobbyist who’d rented a studio space for a few weeks during her staycation.

Inside our classroom, sleek metal lights overhead illuminated a long butcher’s block with five potter’s wheels. As we each sat down at one, Sandberg put us at ease, joking and finding the perfect pedagogical tone — encouraging without infantilizing. She demonstrated how to center the clay on the wheel, wet it, scoop out a base, and stretch it out to form the walls of a pot. When my clay started wobbling, she showed me how to settle it down by pinching the top of the wall. 

As my creation grew more bowl-like, I started to feel comfortable, and Sandberg suggested that I “follow the clay.” Just an hour earlier, this would’ve sounded like half-baked Zen. But sitting in front of the spinning wheel, it made perfect sense. For almost two centuries, people had followed the clay in this very place; the clay knew where to go. My hands moved up the wall of smooth wet gray, and I soon found myself staring down at a bowl — a real thing that someone could use in a kitchen without embarrassment. 

I was feeling pretty good about myself until I saw that Bogren had already finished two bowls and was putting the finishing touches on an actual Höganäs krus.

“I took a pottery class in fifth grade,” he sheepishly explained.

“It’s terribly annoying,” Sandberg said with a laugh. “But he was born here. And if you’re from Höganäs, ceramics are in your blood.” 

A version of this story first appeared in the October 2024 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline “Breaking the Mold.”