From Creative Director at L’homme Rouge to working with silver. Gothenburg-raised Jonatan Härngren started Kultur 5 to take a short break from fashion and the seasons, and get a little closer to the craft, spend time on form and experiment with materials.

– I wanted the first product to reflect the environment I grew up in, where I experienced my youth. Rocky rocks, reeds and water, and therefore chose to copy these stone structures to another material, which then became silver. Given that the silver is softer than stone, it is possible to knock in the structure. At the same time, I wanted this to be something you can carry, to carry a culture, a place and a history.

– There are also sustainable ideas about silver, that it can be reused. Which means that you do not stock much and all material can always be reused. A process I am satisfied with.

His first collection is called Conversations on the cliffs and is now available at APLACE.

– I have not had any thoughts about starting a big brand, but more of a meeting place where I organize workshops, discuss and experiment with materials.

Therefore, I chose to use the word Culture, as it is a gathering place. The number 5 is part of the structure we have chosen to build the brand with. As the brand is divided into different material categories. 5/1 (silver), 5/2 (next year a new material will be introduced, the silver will always remain). Instead of launching traditional collections.

– The west coast was just the inspiration for the first project!

How is it different from the design job with L’homme Rouge?

– At L’homme Rouge, my work was very comprehensive, as Creative Director and Designer, which was then fashion design, textile which is something completely different. The textile industry (which I continue to work with) is other types of factories, processes. The materials are soft and you work much more with the body, movement and functionality. Then a garment consists of an incredible number of components, compared to silver. And that was the simplicity I was looking for when I started this project. A material, a silhouette, a surface and structure, which can still have a very strong narrative property. But above all the body. Jewelry is not as dependent on the movement of the body, the jewelry is something much more separate.

– The process is also a little less complex and my days are a little more peaceful. But I thrive in and miss the chaotic fashion days. The jewelry does not require as large a “room”, not as much space. It is something quite small, which worked well for me as I wanted to start small-scale and develop the brand a little more organically.

Tell us about your studio, where you create Culture 5 by hand.

– I am partly in my studio in Aspudden, but also in the family’s workshop in Gothenburg. The Kultur 5 studio is a small studio / workshop in Aspudden, where usually something wonderfully instrumental is played from the speaker. It is a very woody and quiet environment, small but a lot of space for experiments. All interiors are tests for future projects. Like the aluminum lamps hanging from the ceiling. A product that will soon be launched, made from waste from the aluminum packaging from the jewelry.

Tell us about the jewelery now available at APLACE.

– I wanted to interpret growing up on the west coast in both objects and photographic documentation. Therefore, as I mentioned earlier, iron is hammered against the stones in this very place, to try to copy the structure from the stones you spent so much time on, the iron simply gets the structure of the stone on itself. Then the iron is made into rings, and a mold is made on them.  This stone structure is recurring in most objects. There is a straightforwardness and honesty in it, randomness, far from something 3D-printed.

Your design aesthetic is very much based on androgyny and fragility. Do you want to explain what they both mean to you?

– I think it’s a vibration I’m always looking for. When things meet, and something happens. As young people, who listen to loud music in a beautiful place, a meadow, flowers, something fragile.

– I have always made the same interpretations in fashion, how a like raw fabric, with a lot of structure and then put in a romantic context. It must be those lace curtains, the meadows and Kurt Cobain and The Radio Dept that created this in my childhood environment.