NOMO - Arte Store Opening

Home fragrances, design pieces & creative community

There’s a new creative space opening in Malmö this Friday – Arte Store. NOMO visited the multi creative talents Erika Hallgren and Tim Hardenstedt to talk about their plans for the store, creative red threads, and the difficulty of describing scents.

Despite the busy lunch traffic on the street outside it is surprisingly calm when entering the store at Östra Rönneholmsvägen. Creamy butter yellow walls and ceiling embrace us, being lifted by the beautiful old entrance painted in a burnt orange hue. There is paper on the floor, power tools and a ladder piled up in a corner. One week until opening it’s still much of a work in progress but we truly like where it’s heading.

At Arte Store you will find thoughtfully curated design pieces that bring exceptional craftsmanship into your space. Zero mass production. All local or semi-local makers. Including their line of home fragrances, crafted in-store.

With a background from an incredibly wide range of creative fields, Erika explains that starting their own creative business she gets to revisit knowledge from previous experiences.

Tim: Your background is a little all over the place.

Erika: But there is a red thread.

Tim: Yes okay, maybe a bit of a crooked red thread.

Erika’s creativity goes all the way back to high school where she studied textile design, after graduation she moved to Gothenburg to study cultural project management at Kulturverkstaden, followed by a move to Dallas for fashion design and marketing studies.

Erika: And I also studied some jewelry design, because why not.

Returning to Malmö a couple of years later, Erika worked as store manager at Humana second hand, and later on as leader for the events and workshops at AB Småland. Apart from this Erika has run her own clothing brand in Copenhagen and freelanced within design, sustainability, event and urban development. And some years ago she got yet another education, this time in human ecology.

Erika: Studying the relationship between human, nature and economical systems – it felt like I tied everything together I had done up until that point.

Tim: You forgot to mention that you also have been working with Doc Lounge.

Erika: Oh yeah, I was a project leader for Doc Lounge for a while.

Tim: When Erika tells about her background it always sounds like it’s my grandpa telling the story of his life. The only difference being that he is almost 90.

NOMO: It really sounds like you also sailed the seven seas.

Erika: Well, I did actually travel around on my own for a year and lived some time in Australia.

Tim’s background is a little more straightforward, but that doesn’t mean less creative, having lived most of his life in Malmö, working full time as a UX/UI and graphic designer as well as being a musician, playing under the name Tim the Lion Tamer.

Ever since they met, the couple had been talking about making something creative together. After numerous personal tragedies, they felt a necessity to let go of thinking and start making something. That’s when they began creating candles.

Erika: At that point we definitely needed a common project and I knew I had to get out of my head and work with my hands again. It was actually Tim who came up with the idea that we should make candles. I have previously worked with scents in different contexts but candles were a new media for me. Knowing how much rubbish there is in scented candles it felt a bit scary and like a big responsibility.

Tim: And for a long time I have had many ideas of things I wanted to do, but never realized any of them because it was always much more convenient not to. You always hear that life is short and I wish we could have come to that insight without everything that happened, but today that insight is a strong drive for us.

The name, brand and logo for Arte was already created but they wanted to save it for a bigger project, so for time being they sold their candles under the pilot project Makeriet. After some time creating candles in their home, Erika and Tim started looking for a studio where they could have their production.

Tim: Having a scented candle production in your home brings a lot of things with it. It smells, for example. It smells a lot!

Erika: So when we got the offer to take over this store, we couldn’t say no.

Tim: It was probably earlier than we had planned but we started discussing to do something more than just candle production here. Having already created the Arte brand we felt it was time to bring it to life.

Their enthusiasm for the craft behind the Arte candles shines through when Erika explains the difference between natural scents and chemical ones, about the importance of correct wick material, natural waxes and the incredible chemistry behind it all.

NOMO: In my head there are pipettes involved in the creation of your scented candles?

Erika: There are definitely pipettes!

Tim: She is even wearing a lab coat when producing candles.

The very broad creative backgrounds of the two is noticeable in their candle creation, the Arte candles are as far away as you can get from the sweet vanilla candles some of us had in our rooms as teenagers.

Tim: We are always thinking about the storytelling when creating a new scent. Making our most recent scent we talked a lot about visual impressions and music, we wanted to see if it was possible to reflect the feeling of an American 80’s road trip in a candle. It was a very fun way of working.

With Tim being a musician they even talked about creating a theme song for the new scent. Instead, they curated a playlist with music they hoped would evoke the same feeling as the scent.

Tim: It is extremely hard to describe with words how something smells, it’s so personal.

Apart from being an ever changing store selling their own home fragrances and other creators’ paintings, ceramics, glassware, textiles, prints, books and much more, Arte will be an active meeting place for like minded creatives.

Erika and Tim’s wish is to highlight and cherish the the hard work and passion that small scale creators put into their businesses. With the majority of the profit from the objects sold going to the creators they practice their belief and through hands on workshops they hope to give visitors understanding in the process behind the crafts sold in the store.

Erika: There will of course be a candle workshop in the near future. And a scent workshop. Maybe a ceramic workshop too? It will all be about the creative community, and passion, that is important.

This Friday, 6th of June, between 17.00 - 20.00, Erika and Tim will host an opening event in the Arte Store.

NOMO: What can visitors expect from attending the event?

Tim: Hopefully that we are done with all the painting!

Erika: That everything is up and nothing is falling down. Jokes aside, they can expect a celebration of summer and that we are finally open. Many of the creators represented in the store will be there.

Tim: And there will be bubbles!

Erika: It will be a good atmosphere and good company.

Tim: We talked about having some live music but the space is not really suited for that.

NOMO: Maybe a little risky swinging the guitar among ceramics and glass?

Tim: A yeah no no no, we skipped that idea.

Erika: I hope we will have a bench outdoors where you can sit and have bubbles, have good chats and show people passing by what a nice creative space this is.

Hearing Erika and Tim talk about their backgrounds and their visions for Arte Store there is absolutely no doubt that it will be a space for curiosity and exploration. NOMO is excited to see what this new space on Malmö’s creative scene has to offer!

Find Arte Store at Östra Rönneholmsvägen 4 (next to Bageri Leve - a very good combination if you ask us).

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