Stockholms Auktionsverk proudly presents a trove of furniture born from a unique and, to many, unknown artistic legacy.Thomas Tempte (1942–2016) devoted his professional life to the essential interplay between craft, material, technique, and form. His practice spanned marquetry, furniture and architectural design, writing, and the reconstruction of pre-industrial machines and woodworking tools – some situated at the crossroads of technical history and sculpture.

Around the turn of the millennium, a significant portion of this work was carefully packed away in a barn in Åtvidaberg, owned by Viveca and Johan Adelswärd – and remained there, undisturbed, until now.

In 2020, during the preparation of a book project about Tempte, furniture makers and designers John Funkquist and Joakim Zickert were invited to catalogue the barn’s contents. Among decades of work, they discovered piles of furniture components – but no blueprints – in a state of organised chaos. Tempte had evidently laid the groundwork for a small-scale furniture production. To ensure his legacy wouldn’t be lost, they decided to pick up where he left off.

What followed became a cultural preservation project that illuminates one of the core tenets of craftsmanship: knowledge passed down from practitioner to practitioner, across generations and geographies. Such a dialogue has taken place here – and thanks to it, we now have access to a body of advanced and unconventional woodworking of the highest quality. Full of rule-breaking and boundary-pushing, the kind only a truly seasoned and masterful artisan could reach after decades of dedicated work.