PAPER ART

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During MOTHER's recent Scandinavian Crafts Tour, our travelers had the opportunity to meet with many of Finland and Denmark's top designers and craftspersons. The visits were thrilling, but of course—no matter how inspired we were—most of us couldn't imagine trying to tackle the projects shown to us by the artists.

When we arrived in Copenhagen, however, we found that some of the hottest selling items in the city's famous craft shops were small window and wall hangings made mostly of construction paper. Here, we realized, was an art fitting the abilities and budgets of a large number of people. The sophisticated versions of the paper snowflakes that often adorn school classrooms weren't inexpensive, either! Though they ranged from only five to ten inches high, the popular pieces sold from $4.35 to $7.15 each.

A GENIUS AT WORK

That experience was enough to set those of us with entrepreneurial inclinations to thinking. Then—while visiting Creative Island Courses, a crafts school on the tiny, lovely Danish island of Aero—we met Solveig Luntang-Jensen, who has gone a step further and turned "paper cutouts" into a spectacular artform.

A former potter, Solveig gave up that craft when she suffered liver damage from some of the chemicals used in ceramic work and turned, instead, to weaving. But one day, as the Dane tells it, she became extremely annoyed at her family over some minor matter . . . picked up a pair of scissors that her husband, a veterinarian, uses in delicate eye surgery .. and expressed her anger by clipping out a gro tesque hobgoblin face from a sheet of black construction paper. (She's still fond of such designs, but today the faces are those of decidedly cheerful demons.)