FOOOOOD!

Not only are you enriching your skills and your mind at Capellagården but also you are enriching your taste buds from the exquisite food that’s on offer! The café makes and bakes fresh organic, often vegetarian, produce everyday mostly from the school's farm and garden for Capellagården’s visitors and students. It is KRAV-certified (Sweden's eco able for organic food) and was a real highlight! The dishes were delicious and picture perfect with additional edible floral presentations on the plate and table. The attention to detail was very much admired. Meals were served in the communal dining room Vingårdssalen which became the centre for catching up with other students and appreciating the meals. 

The magnificent breakfast spread on offer every morning

Orchard fruits cherries and redcurrants

An amazingly pink beetroot soup that almost inspired my pattern!

There's always a queue!

Even the humble cucumber gets dressed up

Despite the Summer being the worst one in 30 years, when the sun came out, alfresco dining was a must!

Healthy, nutritious vegetarian dishes were served daily

Redcurrants were in season and often adorned many sweet and savoury dishes.

Cardamom cake a typically Skandinavian flavour.

It was such a delight to see the school's ceramics being used at Vingårdssalen.

Salad served in cabbage leaves - so pretty!

Homemade twisty bread which was still warm mmmmmm!

Fika

Although most days we were working hard printing and sketching we still managed to grab a “Fika” and grabbed a coffee in one of the many handmade ceramic cups in the school’s dining cupboard. On occasion we all sat down together for Fika and enjoyed the exceedingly good cake!

The most amazing chocolate and coconut brownie for our last Fika.

Served with rhubarb compote and creme fraiche and coffee of course!

The renowned cafe - visitor's view.

Absolutely everything was handmade or baked on site.

One of my café discoveries was traditional Swedish Biskvier - a chocolate cream almond biscuit, perfect for a little sweet something at Fika time. After I tried to order some, a lovely girl at the café went out of her way to give me the recipe because the biscuits wouldn’t survive a 12 hour trip back to London. 

The best discovery - Swedish Biskvier!

YUUUMMM!

Café Mejeriet

Although we had such a variety daily culinary eats at Capellagården, it was nevertheless a treat to visit the old dairy at Café Mejeriet where they sold an array of ice cream flavours.

Traditional yet kitsch in it's decor the café was a lovely place to visit in the evening after a hard day printing.

The Old Dairy

Care to take a bath outside anyone? 

The menu, trouble was trying to choose what to have

Junko feeling pleased with her ice cream choices

This was cherry and almond, blueberry and walnut ice cream....

Gardens at Capellagarden

It was clear from the beginning of our stay that Capellagården was a place that was renowned for its beautiful gardens. It was not hard to see that a wealth of inspiration came from them.

Herb Garden

In the newly renovated herb garden grows a hundred different herbs and medicinal plants grouped by usage. Here you will find everything from useful culinary herbs to toxic rarities surrounded by a traditional wall of limestone and wheelchair accessible paths.

The rose garden

is a closed room where fragrant roses, clematis and perennials are intermingled.

The orchard

contains some eighty different varieties of apples, pears, plums and cherries. Capellagården orchard is also a local clone archives and grow in collaboration with the Program for Cultivated Diversity, POM, a number of so-called mandate varieties. Mandate varieties are local varieties preserved for their cultural and genetic value. In the orchard also live farm Muscovy ducks.

Vegetable cultivation

The school also hosts an Ecological Gardening course which runs from February until November. Managed and built by the garden students. Here are cultivated a large amount of different vegetables and summer flowers that will benefit school's household. You could definitely tell who were the garden students from their healthy complexions and their ingenious ways of accessorising dungarees with tool belts!

Day 2 - Open Screen printing at Capellagården.

Day 2 brought more printmaking fun using the method of 'open screen' printing. The technique uses paper forms against the screen to create a resist when the ink pulls through, much like that of stencilling. Ripped paper restricts your control of realistic image making and produces an abstract and more graphic effect. Stencilling can be done by cutting out images and then printing the negative space, anything with paper in the way is left as the unprinted surface which is the opposite way to printing the positive. It took us a few goes to get our heads round this and I'm still a bit stuck!

Lisa demonstrating the ripped paper effect.

I wasn't particularly enamoured with my attempt probably because it ended up looking weirdly rude and biological! However, it certainly taught me how to make more freer forms with the ripped paper.

Creating a freer pattern with ripped paper.

Er, the end result!

I'd definitely repeat this technique by using cut out stencils like my second attempt below:

Stage one of my stencil design

Layer 2 of the stencil print

I added more paper inside of the petals to leave white shapes.

Final layer of cut out leaves