snibbskål

I was just coresponding with someone about traditional Scandinavian turned vessels and wanted to post a link to pictures of snibbskål online, I couldn’t find any so thought I would share some pics I took in museums in Sweden in 2003, turns out I remembered the spelling wrong and can now add links to lots of great pictures.

Google translates snibbskål  as “ear cup” my Swedish friends told me snibb means pretty much the same as tab in English, it can be the corner of a piece of fabric, anything that sticks out or an ear lobe (ears were also nicknamed tabs when I was young). skål means bowl, it is also the standard toast when drinking alcohol and the link between bowls and drinking is strong.

So here are a collection of bowls with tabs, the ones normally reffered to as snibbskål are the square pair in the middle with 4 tabs.

 I particularly loved this bowl and made many copies of it 7 or 8 years ago.

 

 here then is the standard snibbskål

 they are often painted, and often have steps in the internal profile

Side  profile

 Dates are not uncommon and most are 18th or early 19th c.

 When you are turning on a pole lathe and cutting blanks out with an axe then the corners are one of the more difficult bits to cut off. If you are good on the lathe then this is a very fast way to make a bowl. This one feels like a very utilitarian bowl not precious.

 And here a Swedish bowlturners lathe just like the old British ones.

If you do a google image search for snibbskål you’ll see lots more or follow this link for a great museum collection http://www.digitaltmuseum.se/search?name=Snibbsk%C3%A5l