The Magic of Sauna Textiles
Textiles tell stories--each thread part of a narrative that begins with soil, weather, human touch and imagination. Ultimately, we use woven cloth to make ourselves at home. In the sauna, the place we bathe, textiles are a second skin. They soften and sanitize the bench, they provide for modesty, scrub us, dry us and wrap us warmly in the afterglow of the steam. Textiles are more than decoration, they’re essential to sauna's sensory and cultural richness, bringing together tradition and creativity. A cabinet stacked with linen in the Kurtti family sauna. The Bench Suomalainen sänky (The Finnish Bed), by Leena Sammallahti and Marja-Liisa Lehto [ source ] Perhaps textiles became important because of the hard wooden bench. For thousands of years, it has been an essential part of homes in the Nordic countries. In the past, the floor was often cold, packed earth but a bench in the house was a place to sit and eat, work and tell stories by the fire. With the addition of straw, furs and...
