Kanaan at Kvarnviken Mill

Artists: Zoe Barcza, Helga Bärnarp, Alfred Boman, Viktor Fordell, Anders Johansson, Ksenia Pedan, Hilde Retzlaff

Exhibition title: Kanaan

Venue: Kvarnviken Mill, Stockholm, Sweden

Date: October 10, 2020 – , 2021

Photography: Courtesy the artists

Dears Mrs Kerth,
How pleased I am to finally be in contact with you. Thank you for paying attention to my request about the object ‘Model of a bread’ in your collection. This object caught my particular interest as it has the appearance of a common stone. When I first saw it, I was touched by the idea that it had caught an archeologist’s attention as something more than a stone. I have been returning to this object in my thoughts over the last couple of months.

I have seen some other breads from Egyptian Antiquity in the Egyptian Museum of Turin and they all looked quite different from this one – porous and brittle in comparison. Is it perhaps a type of ceramic object which symbolizes a bread and has some ingredients of a bread? You mentioned that it contains emmer wheat. The description ‘model of a bread’ suggests that it is a mere representation. I also noted that you referred to it as a “bread” within citation marks.

Could you tell me about the site from where it was retrieved? I am now assuming that it was found inside a tomb – and due to its location it was identified as something more than a stone.

Many thanks for your time.

Kind regards,
Hilde Retzlaff