Portrait of Julia at @kalthoffaxes

We first heard about Julia through a newspaper article some time ago and have been following her on Instagram ever since. The other week, we had coffee in her workshop, watched an axe take shape, breathed in the scent of linseed oil, and felt the urge to carve grow stronger.

Julia shares that she wanted to learn the craft as early as when she was 19 years old. The idea of shaping a material that would then exist forever fascinated her. Since a course was too expensive, she managed to persuade the teacher to let her pay it off by working in the workshop. She ended up staying—and by the time she was 21, she had become the company’s CEO.

However, the pace in the workshop was fast, leaving no time for product development—something Julia sees as the most crucial and central part of craftsmanship. In 2016, she started her own business and now has two employees. The first year was filled with confusion and hard work, as she focused on developing a carving axe. For the past four years, they have been making the same axe—over and over again.

This is roughly how the process works:

The handle arrives in a fairly finished shape, but since Julia wants it to be just right, she saws and carves it to perfection using a shaving horse.

Each handle is individually oiled with linseed oil and then left to dry for a few hours.

The axe head, made from Swedish steel, is produced in Smedjebacken before arriving at Kalthoff Axes, where Julia’s employees refine it with fine grinding and polishing.

The axe head is then mounted onto the handle using a mallet.

The excess end is sawn off, the rough edges are smoothed, and oil is applied to the cut.

The edge protector, the final piece of the puzzle, is sewn by an upholsterer whom Julia met at her previous job—who now also runs their own business.

We wrap things up by taking a photo of Julia outside her shop, next to the fantastic neon sign in the window. The neighbours in the building across the street ask which magazine we’re from, but we explain that we’re simply here to document a truly great user of our Wilja workwear trousers. 😊