Carolina Smoorenburg - Wood Crafts
WORKSHOP // Carolina Smoorenburg is a Dutch spoon carver, canoe builder, and craft teacher who believes that making things by hand can reconnect us with the natural world and with ourselves.
Since she was little, Carolina has been shaping wood into something useful. First, with a child’s carpentry set, sawing castles from scraps of plywood. Later, with bent nails and leftover planks gifted by neighbours, she built garden benches and shelters. She always carried a pocketknife when camping, whittling sticks by the fire. At thirty, she built her own wooden canoe, which became her way to explore the lakes and forests of Scandinavia.
It was in Sweden, while paddling through wild nature reserves and lingering by campfires, that she fell in love with the hemslöjd tradition, the old Scandinavian craft of making what you need from the land around you. In museums and countryside workshops, she studied the simple, beautiful tools people once relied on. “Even the most ordinary wooden spoon,” she says, “held the effort and care of someone’s hands. That effort made the object feel alive.”
When her 3rd plastic spork broke on a camping trip, Carolina carved her first wooden spoon…and never stopped. Over the last ten years, she has learned from a vibrant Dutch crafts community, studied old tools and utensils in museums and archaeological depots, and taught at festivals and workshops across Europe. She now also runs Slojd.nl, where she hosts webinars, community carving meets, and a global spoon swap.
At Campfire Stories, Carolina brings this tradition to life in two hands-on workshops. You’ll learn the basics of green woodworking, using an axe, knife, and saw, as you carve a Swedish-style butter knife or a spruce-top whisk. Both are simple, functional tools, rooted in old-world craft. You’ll leave not only with something useful you can take home, but also with the quiet joy that comes from shaping wood with your own hands.
https://slojd.nl
