Our Design

Our vision for Växbo Lin is for our linen textiles to be everyday items to use for a long time. This means that we focus on timelessness and quality and do NOT follow trends, which means that the textiles have both a material and an aesthetic sustainability.

To fulfill our vision, since the beginning, we have chosen to work with one and the same designer, Ingela Berntsson. Together with the owners Hanna & Jacob Bruce, she forms the design trio that develops all of Växbo Lin's products. This ensures that our products have a clear common thread and coherence, and can be beautifully combined together.

Ingela is one of the absolute foremost in weaving and fabric structure, and in our collections, she works extensively with the texture of the fabric and various structures that provide a delightful tactile feel. Here's how Ingela Berntsson is described by the author and textile artist Uve Snidare.

Ingela Berntsson – In a Class of Her Own

"Ingela Berntsson was trained at HDK in Gothenburg. She works as a painter, textile artist, and designer. She has designed the entire collection for Växbo Lin and continues to develop it. The collection has its roots in tradition but aims towards the future. The expression is timeless and understated, qualities made for generations.

A small dishcloth or a magnificent tablecloth – it's all the same to her. Everything Ingela Berntsson creates breathes quality and care. It doesn't come about by chance, and it's not left to chance. When Ingela has created a quality and a pattern at her loom in Bohuslän, she washes it, irons it, wrinkles it, dirties it, washes and irons it again. If it still meets Ingela's standards after all that, Växbo Lin, her clients in Hälsingland, take over to weave it on a larger scale. If the quality still meets Ingela's wishes, the fabric goes into production to become a tablecloth, curtain, napkin, or perhaps a small dishcloth in beautifully dyed linen yarn.

For Ingela Berntsson herself, the interest in linen was awakened when she was only six years old and saw her grandfather playing with a ball of linen yarn. The linen had been grown by his mother. The scent and luster stayed with her and inspired her to start weaving complex weaves of linen yarn when she was only fifteen years old. After graduating and attending a one-year weaving school, she applied to the School of Craft Association in Gothenburg, textile department. For the sake of linen. Graduating in the early 1970s, a time unfriendly to design and with an industry that "only worked with synthetics," she chose to work independently. This included working at Klässbols Linneväveri in Värmland, where Rolf Åkerlund heard about her. He was in the process of building up Växbo Lin, called Ingela for consultation, and thus began the successful collaboration in the late 1980s. A collaboration that has resulted in several awards and an increasingly growing export."

/Uve Snidare