ABSTRACT
This article recounts the history of the Elverhøj craft store and collective (1971–1992), established in Copenhagen in 1971. It explores the role of women craft-makers in the 1970s and the ways in which feminine solidarity was viewed, expressed and lived through different forms of collaboration. Drawing on testimonies and interviews with former members, Elverhøj exemplifies a collective arrangement enabling women to produce and sell their crafts amidst everyday practicalities and challenges. Elverhøj was the first collective store of its kind in Denmark and represents a time and place influenced by and entangled with the booming Danish collectivist movement, and served as a hub for alternative fashion among the counter-culture scene in Copenhagen. The heyday of Elverhøj coincided with the emergence of the Danish Redstockings feminist movement that reverberated strongly among groups of women artists as well. But for the women in Elverhøj, as this article aims to show, the “personal was political” without recourse to ideology and manifest political action. Instead, sisterly solidarity was simultaneously enabled by and expressed through craft-making practices rooted in everyday life and beliefs in the empowerment of creativity.
