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VE designs
SPECIALIZING IN SWEDISH MORA CLOCKS
OUR STORY
Welcome, we are Ella and Brian Benton and we are pleased you are here. When I think of Swedish design at its best, I think of the simple carpenters and craftsmen. Those early artists toiled out of passion to create beautiful, yet functional objects. We may never know their names or personal stories but those mysteries are solved through the beauty of what they left behind for us to enjoy for generations to come. At VE designs we believe there is value in creating something with your own hands. A handmade object carries within it the energy of the maker and imprints a piece of the artists’ soul. In Sweden, the clock is a symbol of a measure of our lifespan; it counts out the days in the life of the household. The legend of these clocks is that one bitter winter in the early 1700s the people of the little farming town of Mora, Sweden were starving. A blizzard had struck and the crops were ruined, and this small town was impoverished. So what’s a mother to do, they thought?... Mora comes from “Mor,” the Swedish word for mother. They had to do something, or they feared their town would not survive.
They called for a town meeting where divine inspiration struck. It would take the cooperation and skills of the entire town to make this work, but it was all they had. Overnight the whole village became a beehive of activity. Each family offering up the best of what they knew to do... some families’ carved cases, others built clock works, while a few hand painted by candlelight, into those long winter nights. Their final incredible product was a beautiful, uniquely shaped, tall clock resembling the female form and named after their village itself. Over the next eighty years, this curvaceous Swedish lady created a flourishing industry in Sweden. Catching the attention of kings and queens the popularity of the Mora soared. This simple, yet beautiful, clock had saved the little village.
