Back to the future
From HÅNDVÆRK bookazine no. 12
launched March 2025
When I was writing and taking the photographs for bookazine no. 7 – the construction-themed issue – I visited Mogens Christensen who runs the shop Tibberup Høkeren, to talk to him about his interest in colour pigments. During our conversation, he introduced the concept of ‘larder paint’. Back home again, I experimented with egg-oil tempera, a 1:1:1 mixture of raw egg, water and linseed oil with added pigment.
Paint made from buttermilk or yoghurt is another type of ‘larder paint’; in this variant, casein (milk protein) acts as the binder for the pigment. This is the type that Margrethe Odgaard uses on page 14 in bookazine 12.
Buttermilk is also the basic ingredient in the paint Astrid Ellen Cramer Magnussen is preparing when I visit her in the painter’s workshop at the open-air museum the Funen Village.
She is beginning to feel at home in the small workshop, surrounded by pigments and tools.
She has had an attachment to the museum for several years. In fact, she spent seven years establishing her connection, and now, after the previous painter retired, she is the only painter and a permanently attached freelancer.
For today’s work, she has a couple of litres of milk lined up next to a bottle of linseed oil and a metal can labelled ‘Indian red’.
The recipe is simple: 1 litre of buttermilk is mixed with 3 shot glasses of linseed oil and 3 cups of pigment.
Indian red is a factory-made iron-based pigment that comes in a range of shades, from red to reddish brown to brown.
The Funen Village is an open-air museum consisting of historical half-timbered buildings, fields, gardens and animals that represents 19th-century everyday life in the Funen countryside.
The life depicted here was characterized by scarcity of resources. As a result, the consumption pattern was very different from today’s. Raw materials were less plentiful, and they were fully utilized. This applied both to food and to the materials used to produce basic necessities, such as buildings, clothing and tools. In this zero-waste economy, things were reused, repaired and recycled. Everything was put to use, if nothing else, then as fuel to heat the houses or as fertilizer for the fields.
This rural community rested on a circular approach to life, based on seasonal cycles. Every spring, life ’started over’, and the same activities took place again and again.
Over the past 100 years, we have adopted a linear worldview. We yearn for more and better, with accelerating growth as our key parameter. Questioning the assumption that ‘more’ still equals ‘better’, the Funen Village demonstrates the circular lifestyle of the past with the goal of inspiring its visitors to include the old methods, materials and worldview in their everyday life.
The Funen Village is a certified ‘Green Attraction’.
Source: The Funen Village
Astrid Ellen Cramer Magnussen, b. 1982
Trained house painter in 2004
Subsequently trained as a restoration painter
Lives in the north of Funen
Went into business for herself in 2022 in partnership with her husband, who ran an independent restoration carpentry company.
The company name is Kærsgård Restaurering og Tømrerarbejde (Kærsgaard Restoration and Carpentry).
The paint is ready
Where did you train? I ask, as we move down a gravel road towards the Skamby-Torup farm, where Astrid is going to paint the timber frame of a half-timbered building.
‘With Frank Kristensen in Odense. After my apprenticeship, I stayed with the company for 16 years,’ she says. ‘When a colleague and I both chose to do the additional training as restoration painters, which enabled us to work with tempera, linseed oil and pigments as well as decorative techniques, such as graining, the owner stepped up and began to take in restoration projects.’
What is your fascination with the traditional methods?
‘I prefer the simple paint types – “simple” in the sese that you know what is in the paint you use, because you mixed it yourself – in part because you know that when you use them, the timber and brickwork can breathe.
In terms of colour, light reflects much more beautifully off pigment-based paint than off conventional paint.’
She pauses briefly, then adds, ‘In the old days, house painting was a highly skilled craft, and I would like to see us reclaim that professional pride and base our work on knowledge, experience and creativity.’
You went independent in 2022, and now, you work at the Funen Village.
‘I have been coming here since I completed my restoration training. I reached out to them, because I saw that painting was not represented on the museum’s Craft Days, and was invited in to tell the visitors about the old painting methods. That gave me a chance to test my knowledge and also paved the way for my current attachment.’
Craft Day is an annual event where the museum’s craftspeople offer free advice to the public about how to maintain old houses.
The museum also offers courses in a variety of subjects, including wicker weaving, knitting, inkle weaving, tree grafting, brickwork and window painting.
‘I just love it here. Unlike so many other places in society, here, imperfection is perfection. The crooked facades are organic, like a landscape – the sight of them makes me feel calm inside.
I often talk to Lars, the bricklayer, about the beauty of simplicity.
He was hired shortly after I began to work here as a freelancer.
While I work with pigment and a binder, his work is really cut to the bone: earth, sand, lime. We can go down and see how he makes unfired bricks.’
Astrid drops her paint off at the farmhouse, and we continue into the far corner, where Lars Andersson is working in the drying shed at Bladstrup brickworks, a facility from northern Funenthat was moved and rebuilt in the Funen Village.
He splits his time between communication – including courses and visitor activities – and maintenance of the farms and houses in the museum village. He is a passionate advocate for unfired bricks, and through experimentation he has developed a version that is simple to produce from clay sourced on-site.
He can use the bricks to repair the old houses but would like to reach a wider audience. So if anyone is interested, he invites them to reach out. He suggests that we stop by his workshop, where he makes lime mortar and stores all the old tools.
We part ways at the workshop. Astrid and I continue to the farmhouse she will be painting. Along the way, we pass worn-down buildings that are far from picture perfect. Funen villages were never glamourous.
While Astrid paints the timber frames, I ask her what sort of clients she has in her own business. At first it sounds as if she may just have a small handful of clients, but as we talk, she remembers many different projects, ranging from small ones that she handles on her own to bigger ones that require the involvement of additional colleagues.
Many of the projects relate to her knowledge of traditional methods. She tells me that a colleague who used to have many private clients now works exclusively on renovation for the philanthropic association Realdania. Any inquiries he receives, he sends her way.
Currently, she is working on a number of projects: one involving clay paint, one restoring old windows using linseed oil paint and a joint project with Heidi Zilmer (featured in the book HÅNDVÆRK) at the Widows’ House in the Moravian Community in Christiansfeld. She also has some work for three churches in her local area. She tells me about the altarpiece in one of the churches, her favourite project – at first glance, it looks like wood carving, but the effect is an illusion, achieved with paint. The churchwarden found it plain and uninteresting, until consultants from the National Museum of Denmark made a visit and declared it precious and worthy of preservation; now he views it with more esteem.
Sometimes a change of perspective may require a little help.
We talk about a time when labour was cheap, and high-quality wood was the costly factor. For many years, the opposite has been true. Perhaps if we begin to price resources appropriately, to reflect the cost of their use for the planet, we may begin to put more labour into our products. This would certainly improve their quality, we both agree.
Astrid recently painted the couple’s garage using traditional Swedish rödfarg.
She shares her recipe:
500 g ferrous sulphate
12.5 l water
500 g wheat flour or finely ground rye flour
2 kg red oxide
0.25 l linseed oil varnish
0.25 l wood tar
Dissolve the ferrous sulphate in boiling water.
Beat the flour into this solution.
After 15 minutes of boiling and stirring, add the red oxide, stirring continuously.
Boil this mixture for another 15 minutes before adding linseed oil varnish and wood tar.
She continues painting, and I go exploring in between the buildings – finding onions hung up to dry here, a quince tree there, and on my way out, I pass the taproom in the active country inn Sortebro Kro, which can be accessed from inside the museum village or from the street. It is buzzing with life, and the smell of home cooking wafts from an open window.
Da jeg skrev og fotograferede bookazine 8 – det nummer, som har bygningshåndværk som tema –besøgte jeg Tibberup Høkeren for at tale med ham om hans interesse for farvepigmenter. Ved den lejlighed introducerede han begrebet spisekammermaling.
Jeg gik hjem og eksperimenterede med æggeolietempera, en blanding af rå æg, vand og linolie 1:1:1, tilsat farvet pigment.
Maling fremstillet af kærnemælk, ymer eller yoghurt er en anden type spisekammermaling, her er det kasein (mælkeprotein), som binder pigmentet. Margrethe Odgaard maler med denne type af maling i artiklen om hende i bookazine 12.
Kærnemælk er også basen i den maling, Astrid Ellen Cramer Magnussen er i gang med at forberede her, hvor jeg besøger hende på malerværkstedet i Den Fynske Landsby.
Hun er så småt ved at føle sig hjemme på det lille værksted blandt pigmenter og værktøj.
Hun er kommet i landsbyen gennem flere år. Syv år brugte hun mere præcist på at etablere sin tilknytning, inden hun, affødt af at den tidligere maler er blevet pensioneret, nu er eneste maler og fast freelance.
Til dagens job står et par liter mælk klar ved siden af en flaske med linolie og en metalbøtte, hvorpå der står engelskrød.
Opskriften er i al sin enkelhed: 1 liter kærnemælk blandes med 3 snapseglas linolie og 3 kopper pigment.
Farven engelskrød, italienskrød eller jernoxydrød – kært barn har mange navne – er et fabriksfremstillet jernholdigt farvepigment, som fås i forskellige nuancer fra rødt over rødbrunt til brunt.
Den Fynske Landsby er et frilandsmuseum, som består af gamle bindingsværksbygninger, marker, haver og dyr, og som formidler dagliglivet på landet for 1800-tallets fynboer.
Museet viser et samfund, der var præget af knaphed på ressourcer. Forbrugsmønstret var derfor et helt andet end det, vi kender i dag. Råvarerne var ikke så rigelige, og man udnyttede dem til det yderste – både når det kommer til fødevarer og materialer til at producere de nødvendige ting: huse, klæder, redskaber. Man genbrugte og reparerede og producerede intet affald. Alt blev brugt – om ikke til andet så til varme i stuerne eller gødning på markerne.
Grundlæggende var landbosamfundet bygget op om en cirkulær livsforståelse baseret på årstidernes rytme. Hvert forår startede ‘livet’ forfra, og de samme aktiviteter fandt sted om og om igen.
De seneste 100 år er vores livsforståelse blevet lineær. Vi higer mod mere, flere, bedre med øget vækst som det mest centrale måleparamenter. Den Fynske Landsby sætter spørgsmålstegn ved, om ‘mere’ fortsat er lig med ‘bedre’, og formidler derfor datidens cirkulære levevis med det formål at inspirere gæsterne til at bruge de gamle metoder, materialer og livssyn i deres hverdag.
Den Fynske Landsby er en certificeret ‘Green Attraction’.
Kilde: Den Fynske Landsby
Astrid Ellen Cramer Magnussen, f. 1982
Uddannet maler i 2004
Har siden videreuddannet sig blandt andet som restaureringsmaler
Bor på Nordfyn
Har været selvstændig malermester siden 2022, hvor hun gik i partnerskab med sin mand, som i forvejen drev en restaureringssnedker-virksomhed
Firmanavnet er Kærsgård Restaurering og Tømrerarbejde.
Malingen er rørt sammen
Hvor er du uddannet? spørger jeg, mens vi bevæger os ad en grusvej i retning mod Skamby-Torupgården, hvor Astrid skal male bindingsværk.
“Hos Frank Kristensen i Odense, og jeg blev i firmaet i 16 år, efter jeg havde fået svendebrev”, svarer hun og fortsætter: “Fordi både jeg og en kollega valgte at videreuddanne os til restaureringsmalere, og dermed til at arbejde med tempera, linolie og pigmenter og med dekorative teknikker som ådring, var mester modig og begyndte at tage restaureringsopgaver ind.”
Hvad er det, som fascinerede dig ved de gamle teknikker?
“Jeg synes, at de simple typer maling – simple forstået som, at man ved, hvad der er i den maling, man maler med, fordi man selv har rørt ingredienserne sammen – er at foretrække, blandt andet fordi man med dem ved, at træ og murværk kan ånde.
I forhold til farven så reflekteres lyset meget smukkere i de pigmentbaserede farver end i konventionel maling.”
Efter et øjebliks pause siger hun: “I gamle dage var malerfaget et kunsthåndværk, og jeg ser gerne, at vi tager den faglige stolthed tilbage og baserer vores virke på både viden, erfaring og kreativitet.”
Du blev selvstændig i 2022, nu arbejder du i Den Fynske Landsby.
“Jeg er kommet her, siden jeg tog restaureringsuddannelsen. Jeg tog kontakt, fordi jeg havde set, at malerfaget ikke var repræsenteret på Håndværkerdagene, og fik så lov til at hjælpe til med at tale med de besøgende om gamle malerteknikker. Det gav mulighed for at prøve min viden af, det har også banet vej for min nuværende tilknytning.”
Håndværkerdagen er en dag om året, hvor publikum får mulighed for at tale med Den Fynske Landsbys håndværkere for at få gode råd om vedligehold af gamle huse.
Desuden udbyder landsbyen kurser i mange forskellige emner: pileflet, strikning, båndvævning, podning af træer, murværk og vinduesmaling.
“Jeg elsker at være her.
I modsætning til så mange andre steder i samfundet er uperfekt her det perfekte. De skæve husfacader er organiske som et landskab – synet af dem gør mig helt rolig.
Jeg taler ofte med mureren Lars om skønheden i det enkle.
Han blev ansat kort tid, inden jeg begyndte at komme her som freelance.
Hvor jeg arbejder med pigment og en binder, så er det, han arbejder med, helt skåret ind til benet, jord, sand og kalk. Vi kunne gå ned og se, hvordan han fremstiller ubrændte mursten.”
Astrid stiller sin maling af ved gården, og vi fortsætter ned i det fjerneste hjørne, hvor Lars Andersson arbejder i tørreladen på det nordfynske Bladstrup Teglværk, som er genopført i Den Fynske Landsby.
Han deler sin tid mellem formidling, det vil blandt andet sige kurser og aktiviteter for og med gæsterne, og vedligeholdelse af landsbyens gårde og huse. Han er passioneret fortaler for ubrændte sten, og han har eksperimenteret sig frem til en version, som han helt ukompliceret kan fremstille af det, han graver op på stedet.
Stenene kan bruges, når de gamle huse skal repareres, men fortællingen, den vil han gerne bredere ud med. Så er der nogen, som vil vide noget, så kan de blot give lyd, siger han og foreslår samtidig at vi sammen går en tur forbi hans værksted. Det er her, han fremstiller kalkmørtel, og her alle de gamle redskaber er opbevaret.
Vi skilles ved værkstedet, Astrid og jeg fortsætter til gården, hvor hun skal male. Langs vejen passerer vi bygninger, som er slidte og absolut ikke noget glansbillede. En fynsk landsby har aldrig været prangende.
Mens Astrid maler bindingsværk, spørger jeg, hvilke kunder hun servicerer, når hun ikke er her. Først lyder det, som om hun måske bare har et par stykker, men som samtalen skrider frem, kommer hun i tanke om mange forskellige projekter – både små projekter, som hun klarer selv, og større opgaver, som hun løser i samarbejde med kolleger.
Mange af projekterne knytter sig til hendes viden om gamle teknikker. Hun fortæller, at en kollega, som tidligere løste mange opgaver for private kunder, nu udelukkende arbejder med renovering for Realdania, og han sender de forespørgsler, han modtager, i hendes retning.
Her og nu maler hun med lermaling hos en kunde, et andet sted restaurerer hun gamle vinduer med linoliemaling, hun maler sammen med Heidi Zilmer (omtalt i bogen HÅNDVÆRK) i Brødremenighedens Enkehus i Christiansfeld, og så er der de tre kirker, som ligger i det område, hvor hun bor – der har hun også haft lidt at se til. Hun fortæller om altertavlen i den ene, den er hendes favorit; umiddelbart tror man, at der er tale om billedskærerarbejde, men det er illusionsmaleri. Kirkeværgen fandt den tarvelig, indtil konsulenterne fra Nationalmuseet kom på besøg og fortalte, at den er kostbar og bevaringsværdig, så steg den i hans agtelse.
Af og til behøves lidt hjælp, når man skal ændre perspektiv.
Vi taler om, at engang var arbejdskraft det billige og ædelt træ det dyre. I mange år har det været tværtom – hvis vi begynder at prissætte ressourcerne korrekt, med den pris, det koster jorden at bruge af dem, så skal vi måske tilbage til at lægge mere arbejde i vores projekter, det vil gøre dem kvalitativt bedre, er vi enige om.
Hjemme har Astrid netop malet garagen med slammaling, også kendt som traditionel svenskrød.
Hendes opskrift får jeg med på vejen:
500 g jernvitriol
12,5 l vand
500 g hvedemel eller finmalet rugmel
2 kg oxydrød
0,25 l linoliefernis
0,25 l trætjære
Jernvitriol opløses i kogende vand.
I denne opløsning indpiskes melet.
Efter et kvarters kogning og omrøring tilsættes, under flittig omrøring, oxydrød.
Denne blanding koges yderligere et kvarter, hvorefter linoliefernis og trætjære tilsættes.
Hun maler videre, og jeg går på opdagelse mellem husene – finder løg hængt til tørre her og et træ med kvæder der, og da jeg har hilst af, passerer jeg, på vej til udgangen, krostuen i den igangværende Sortebro Kro, som har indgang både fra Den Fynske Landsby og fra gaden. Den summer af liv, og der dufter af kogekunst fra et åbentstående vindue.
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