My treasure chest

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My treasure chest

Exhibition 1 June–30 September 2013

My treasure chest was the summer exhibition at Skokloster Castle in 2013. Seven people from the world of media, art and design had a free choice of their favourite artefacts from the castle’s collections, one of the world’s foremost baroque castles with an extravagance that is rarely seen.

Those taking part were Eva Funck, actor and programme host, Knut Knutson, antiques expert, Doreen Månsson programme host and TV producer, Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin, photographer and artist, Sebastian Schildt, silversmith, Lars Wallin, couture designer and Lasse Åberg, artist.

Our select seven searched their way through furniture, art, tools and weapons from different centuries to find their own personal treasures. During the cold winter and spring months, they explored the unheated castle’s halls, bed chambers, drawing rooms and cupboards to find things that caught their interest and aroused their curiosity. Their personal choices created the summer exhibition.

Lasse Åberg

"I have chosen a painting by Arcimboldo. For me, Skokloster is a bit like Arcimboldo. All my life I’ve been fascinated by the Bookman and Vertumnus, the “fool the eye” pictures. I know that since childhood I have been fascinated by this kind of fool the eye picture… Vertumnus was my favourite because I have made pastiches of this picture."

Photo: Jens Mohr, Skokloster Castle/SHM (CC BY).

Eva Funck

"I have chosen these things because I think so much of small narratives and also because it is through small narratives that we hear about the world. I think it was really exciting to put a collection together. I think I will have a small box at home where I save things, so I can tell about my life and perhaps tell about the world."

Knut Knutsson

"When I come out to Skokloster Castle and someone asks me to pick out an area that attracts me, that’s not easy. Cases and boxes have always fascinated me. In my work, all artefacts have a box. But who cares about the box? Firstly, they have become important. And here at Skokloster they are looked after."

Lars Wallin

"We started by looking among the textiles, that felt very natural. I soon found these fantastic costumes from the 18th century. Men’s costumes, they are very decorated and flowery, perhaps something we would see as feminine these days. That will be the theme, about how views on the masculine and the feminine have changed, that men were able to be very decorated before. That was an obvious choice.”

Doreen Månsson

"The items I have chosen are a portrait of Anna Margareta and a couple of portraits of he children and some small things that belonged to the children. I think I made that choice because I can identify with being a mother, like so many others. The fact that she had eleven children and only three of them survived… unimaginably awful, I think. Even though she is thought of as privileged, she had a horrible fate.”

Sebastian Schildt

"I have a great passion for functional articles. For me, things that are used have greater beauty than ornamentation - so it feels natural to find functional articles in the castle. The castle is associated with parties and meals. That makes it easy to go for the functional things used at mealtimes. The basic idea of the display is about showing things from departed times; things were very different for the nobility and the servants.”

Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin

"This picture with Saint Birgitta arouses certain memories. I got married in Rome and was to marry in the Swedish church in Rome where the Bridgettine nuns are. When they found out it was me, we weren’t allowed to marry there. We married on the banks of the Tiber. So I have mixed feelings about the saint but am still fascinated by her story.”