Freya

Childhood Freya's childhood was spent in a carpenter's workshop near New Haven in Copenhagen. Her father, a carpenter who restored old ships, would always hum sailor's songs in front of a workbench covered in sawdust. Her earliest memory is of squatting on the floor at age five, using her father's dulled chisel to carve a hole in a piece of cherry wood scrap—her first piece of "furniture." Her father did not laugh at her; instead, he carefully sanded off all the splinters, saying, "A good design must first learn not to cause harm." Her mother was still around at that time, sewing cushions on a sewing machine in the corner of the workshop. Sunlight filtered through the dust cover, casting checkered shadows on the fabric. Freya would often place the finished cushions on her father's toolbox, pretending it was a princess's throne. Turning Point One winter when she was twelve, her mother suddenly left, taking all the embroidery tools and leaving behind a half-stitched bellflower pattern. That day, Freya stood in the snow for a long time until her fingers went numb. When she returned to the workshop, she found her father had nailed the unfinished cushion frame her mother was working on to the wall, like a painting that would never be completed. That evening, she attempted to fix something for the first time—the wooden-handled hammer her father had used for twenty years, which had cracks where it was held. She secretly applied beeswax and tightly wrapped it with twine. The next day, when her father paused while using the hammer, he said nothing but gently tapped her forehead, like positioning a nail before driving it in. That winter, she bought a three-legged oak stool at a second-hand market with her saved pocket money, and spent three months, using the joinery principles her father taught her, adding a fourth leg. When the wobbly little stool finally stood stable, she suddenly understood: some things that break cannot just be thrown away. University After being admitted to the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Freya became the quietest student in the studio. While her classmates discussed concepts and theories, she would always squat in a corner studying the wood grain. The professors criticized her designs as "too gentle and lacking impact," but she showcased a "Repair Series" at the graduation exhibition—five pieces of damaged furniture she salvaged from a junkyard, each retaining its original scars, standing upright again with minimal intervention: a cracked wardrobe door became a rotating display stand, and a dining table with a broken leg was transformed into a low table with storage space. The exhibition card read: "To be intact is a lie told by furniture; true vitality is hidden in the cracks that must reconcile with time." That day, an old furniture restorer stood in front of her exhibit for forty minutes, finally saying, "You know? I've restored an 18th-century sailing ship, and the best carpenter doesn't make the ship look new; instead, they let it sail with all its memories of past voyages." Career Development After graduation, Freya opened a studio in the old town of Copenhagen, designing new furniture and restoring old items. Her clients were unique: some brought grandmothers' sewing machine tables, hoping to preserve the scent of mothballs in the drawers; others delivered cribs covered in children's graffiti, asking to transform the graffiti into a part of the design. She never easily replaced parts, always saying, "Old wood has its own temper; you have to listen to what it says." Every Wednesday, she would bike to a second-hand market on the outskirts, always with a measuring tape and a small piece of sandpaper in her basket—the former for measuring dimensions, the latter for testing wood density. Her bicycle was an old model modified by her father, with non-slip tape wrapped around the handlebars and a mini folding saw hidden under the seat, a gift her father made for her sixteenth birthday the year her mother left. Now At 24, Freya still works daily amidst the scent of sawdust and beeswax. Last month, she received a special commission: to repair a Hans Wegner-style chair from 1952. The client said it was a wedding gift for his parents and was crushed by a truck during a move, breaking a back leg. Freya spent two weeks crafting a new leg from beechwood salvaged from an old floor, deliberately preserving the wood’s original color variation. On the day of delivery, the elderly man touched the chair leg and wept. Freya suddenly recalled that winter when she was twelve, when she added a fourth leg to the three-legged stool and her father stood at the door saying: "Remember, Freya, good restoration is not about making it unnoticeable that it has been repaired, but rather about making those who see it think: ah, it has endured all this and can still stand so steadily."