Joe Barry's mention of students keeping their work reminds me to share the following:

Earlier in the year, I had mentioned receiving a CD of photographs from the Nääs model series from 1902, made by children. The following is from Hans Thorbjörnsson's translation of the introductory text which came recently by email.

Bengt Svensson has worked for forty years as a sloyd teacher and, furthermore, he was active as instructor for sloyd teacher students since 1980. He taught sloyd practice, sloyd methodology and pedagogy at the Department for Esthetic Art (Sloyd, Handicraft and Design) at Linköping University, Sweden.

When studying at summer courses at Nääs in the late 1950’s, Bengt Svensson got into contact with sloyd theories of Otto Salomon. For the rest of his life he became absorbed in Swedish educational sloyd, its methodology and history.

From his own home district near Borås, some fifty kilometres northeast of Nääs, he heard of Sven Alfred Kjellgren (1864-1937), an elementary school teacher who studied at Nääs sloyd teacher training school for six weeks in 1898. After that Alfred taught educational sloyd according to the Nääs-system in his own school. His pupils made the objects of the 1902 model series which took them just four lessons per week in grade 5 to 7.

Bengt Svensson met some of Kjellgren’s former pupils, who have saved their sloyd models over the last 50-60 years. He photographed these models, searched and found more models in other homes – and in the end he got a complete 40-model-series, the very one of the year 1902.

When interviewing the former pupils of Kjellgren, Bengt Svensson found out that Kjellgren had taught sloyd very close to Salomon’s ideas and methods. The interviews and the quality of the models convinced Bengt Svensson that the outcome of Kjellgren’s sloyd instruction was surprisingly good. The former pupils told him of their great appreciation and high esteem of their sloyd work at school.

The story of these models and how they were preserved confirms the significance that hand crafted objects can have in people's lives. They hold memory and emotion, telling the story of growth, accomplishment and relationship. For those who make things with their hands, all this makes perfect sense.