Kara Ghasemiani: Lighting the way to a new career

Above: Kara Ghasemiani’s journey as woodworker was kindled by his interest in making lamps.

Words and photos: Kara Ghasemiani

In 2015 I graduated a mechanical engineer with a master’s in automotive engineering. I was in Shanghai on my first job assignment and one evening I found myself in a restaurant with simple but beautiful, rustic lamps hanging from the ceiling, made of thick hemp rope with light bulbs at their ends.

I didn’t manage to find anything like it back home so with a simple YouTube search I built one myself. That was the start of my creative journey. I became completely absorbed with building lamps, using fallen branches and logs in the forest as well as upcycling old car tyres and bicycle wheels. When the handsaw in my parents’ garage didn’t quite cut it (pun intended) I found a friendly furniture carpenter in my neighbourhood who offered to help.

Carl and Siv Malmsten’s vision for ‘A school for creative work’ was realised in the 1960s with the establishment of Capellagården on the island Öland which lies off the south-east coast of Sweden. Photo: Johan Ekelund 

Selling handmade lamps presented some roadblocks in the form of electric regulations and certifications so I lost momentum but started growing more interested in woodworking. By 2019 I was spending one day a week at the carpenters’ as an unofficial apprentice in parallel with my engineering job.

Around the same time, I was on a Tinder date with a girl whom I had little in common with, except for woodworking. Her eyes glistened with excitement as she told me about a summer course she’d attended, not once, but twice, at a crafts school in an idyllic countryside village.

She told me I just had to apply. We never met again but I did as she said. In the summer of 2020, I lost my engineering job due to the pandemic, right after which I attended a two- week summer course at the magical place that is Capellagården.

A few months later I was arguing with a friend that it would be unreasonable for me to apply for a three-year furniture making course in my thirties, having already spent seven years studying. She asked me the simple but life-altering question: ‘If you could do anything in life right now, what would it be?’

View of the school and herb garden with staff building in the background in which Siv and Carl Malmsten used to live. Photo: Johan Ekelund

I’m currently studying my third and last year at said course. My name is Kara Ghasemiani, I am 35 years old, born and raised in Gothenburg, Sweden, and I feel quite privileged. Privileged to live in a country where we can take student loans without interest and receive government grants for studying. I feel privileged to have the social security to be able to pursue the idea of self- actualisation. And lastly, I feel privileged to have found that elusive sense of purpose that so many of us long for but never find.

I can’t say whether woodworking is my purpose in life, that I have been put on this planet to breathe sawdust and bleed wood glue. All I know is that right now I am so absorbed by the workshop and by creating that I reluctantly take bathroom breaks.

Recognition and affirmation

When my lamp series Hide and Seek was announced runner-up in the World category of the 2023 Maker of the Year awards, I felt a great sense of accomplishment. It’s the first outside recognition I have received for my work, and I’m humbled to have been acknowledged among such great creators.

In my first semester at Capella, we had a one-week design workshop where we were to design and build a lamp prototype, focusing on the design process. I felt some pressure since I had a history in lamp-making, and thought I needed to prove myself. As is often the case, for good and bad, I had a quite clear picture of what I wanted to do right from the get-go, so
I think the purpose of the workshop was a little lost on me.

Detail of Kara Ghasemiani's Hide and Seek lamp

I had a vision of Roman pillars illuminated from behind, and curtain blinds in a circular pattern. As I experimented with paper, I knew I wanted to angle the slats to always keep the light source hidden from sight. In my vision, this was a ceiling lamp, but as I was assembling it on my bench, I realised it looked great as a table lamp. I was immensely pleased with the result and the following year I developed the prototype into the lamp series that came runner-up. When I started at Capella I felt like lamp-making was behind me, but the design workshop rekindled that light. I have protected the lamp design and am hoping to put it into production in one way or another.

Island of creativity

Capellagården is a boarding school for craft and design, located on the island Öland (that literally translates to island-land), off the southeast coast of Sweden. The courses available are furniture, ceramics, textile, gardening and building conservation. The total number of students is around 80, both Swedish and international. The school sits in a quaint and picturesque farming village called Vickleby, and in the low-season I wouldn’t be surprised if Capellagården accounts for half of the village population.

The Capellagården foundation was started in 1960 by husband-and-wife Carl and Siv Malmsten with the vision ‘A school for creative work’. After having searched the country for a long time, they finally found a farm in Vickleby in 1957 where their bigger visions could be realised. The workshops would be open for work at all hours of the day, the students could live and eat at the school with fresh vegetables from the gardens, and the place would be inspiring and stimulating.

The bench room at Capellagården

Carl was a very prolific furniture designer and decorator with a professorial title, but his passion was to give people of all ages the opportunity to further their craft and creative dreams. He used what he earned from his furniture to bring about his school projects. Wife Siv was a trained teacher and was highly involved in school activities.

The quiet and calm rural life in Vickleby suits me. This, and the fact that all our meals are served to us, allows me to focus and invest all my time in creating, without distractions. This place truly is a kindergarten for adults.

The biggest factor in my love for this school is the workshops that are open to us around the clock. Doors are never locked. In the bench workshop each student has their own bench, and the machine hall is fully equipped with everything a furniture carpenter would need.

Another view of the bench room at Capellagården

Being around like-minded, creative people who share your passion for creating is very inspiring and I have learned just as much from my fellow classmates as I have from my great teachers. Seeing what the skilled students of the other departments create is equally inspiring and a welcome contrast to our world revolving around wood. I have even made ceramic handles in a couple of my projects, discovering how meditative (and forgiving) working with clay can be. Intradepartmental collaborations are always encouraged.

Beauty within

As a third-year furniture student you either do a traditional journeyman’s project with a defined framework that requires the most part of a year, or you do a more flexible project that is not subject to review and grading. The teachers are there to guide you throughout, depending on your need. I decided on a project year and my theme is live edges. I love trees, and I love the organic feel of live edges and how they remind us of what the material originally was. So for my final year I am exploring the element of live edges and how I can incorporate them into otherwise strict furniture.

Kara Ghasemiani’s Beauty Within cabinet- on-stand, the first of his third year live edge series.

I have just finalised the second piece of my live edge series which I’ve named Beauty Within. It’s a leg stand cabinet with a tambour door and two drawers that sit atop a wild-looking maple slab. It’s not a secret that I am fond of contrasts, and this piece is full of it! The cabinet case and leg stand are of elm, the case being veneered. The drawer fronts, tambour door and tabletop are maple. The insides of the cabinet reveal some beautiful masur birch veneer that goes very well together with the tabletop.

Fitting dovetail keys for Beauty Within

The maple slab was donated to me by my teacher. It had been lying outside his barn for several years and when I told him about my project and what I was looking for he was generous enough to part with it, and boy am I glad he did! I was literally jumping with excitement as I was planing the withered surface to reveal the hidden universe within. I initially intended to sandblast the live edge but decided to keep the withered surface because I found the contrast gorgeous. What I’m most pleased with in this piece are the live edge drawer pulls. They are a detail that I feel makes the whole piece come together in a subtle yet distinct and playful way.

I really enjoyed making and fitting the butterflies into the tabletop. I think they are a brilliant combination of function and aesthetic detail. I also enjoyed dovetailing the drawers. It had been a while since I did any dovetailing and I’d forgotten how calming and satisfying it can be to spend a whole week by your workbench, only using hand tools. It requires time, and patience, and in a way, that’s the point.

Finding solutions

Many people struggle to define what it means to be an engineer. Engineers included. But what most of us can agree on is that we are good problem solvers. I find that my engineering mindset comes very handy when building furniture. I try to think a few steps ahead and not just about what needs to be done this very moment.

I try to account for margins, plan, divide, and carry out my work in a way that is logical, effective and efficient. I feel like I can come up with technical solutions to problems and not get too delayed by road-bumps.

A music cabinet with a handmade ceramic motif

I’m also quite grateful for my knowledge of geometry and trigonometry. It’s not advanced by any means, just basic high-school math. But I guess since I’ve rehearsed and used it so much it comes to me quite naturally when needing to calculate compound angles and various measurements or distances with angles involved. I even held a short trigonometry class for my classmates last year.

My engineering mindset can however be both a blessing and a curse. I often think in terms of profitability and efficiency, with the end customer

in mind. It makes it hard to justify spending two entire days figuring out the perfect drawer pull. What customer is going to pay for that time? I am getting better at it though. Reminding myself that I’m not here to earn money, but to learn, try things, make mistakes, and enjoy myself. And who knows, maybe I’ll become a crypto-millionaire who can spend an entire month figuring out that perfect drawer pull.

Make a list

Being cursed by perpetual optimising, I love lists. Especially crossing them off. Whenever I’m inefficient I’ve found it’s because I don’t have a list to follow. I set aside time to write down the coming process steps in my project, as detailed as possible. I do it on my laptop so I can easily organise the steps in the order they need to be done. This takes me around 20 minutes, and then I have a detailed step-by-step to-do list for the coming three or more work days.

When I’m in the workshop the next day, I simply transfer the steps onto my notepad and get to work. I don’t need to spend a second thinking what to do next, I will have a clear overview of the work that needs to be done, but more importantly, I will have the great satisfaction of crossing points off with my highlighter! If you feel like you’re not making efficient use of your time in the workshop, my suggestion to you is lists! And if you don’t care about being efficient, then good on you!

As my time in this paradise bubble draws to an end, I feel both anxious and excited. I’m moving back to Gothenburg where I will start slow, renting a workshop space some days a week in parallel with a part-time job, and see how it develops. My dream is to have a workshop of my own, where I’m recognised enough that people come to me because they want my furniture. I’m still figuring out what it is that defines my furniture, but I am hopeful that I can make that dream a reality in the not-too-distant future.

First published in Australian Wood Review, issue 123, June 2023

Contact Kara Ghasemiani via https://www.karacreates.se and Instagram @karacreates