Whole rye flatbread, dry and crispy, with a hole in the center so it could once be threaded onto a pole under the ceiling. You break it and spread it with butter and a firm Swedish cheese.

Why this dish? Rye crispbread is the quintessential everyday food of af Klint's Sweden, and its whole-grain frugality matched the anthroposophic ideal of sobriety she adopted after encountering Steiner's thought. In her studio on Hamngatan as well as her cottage on Munsö, this bread that keeps for months was the natural companion to a life turned toward the spirit rather than the table.

See this bread: it is poor in appearance, and that is precisely its virtue. In the North, we bake it in large rounds that we hang from a rod under the roof, where they wait out the winter without spoiling. I have learned to ask only for a piece, some butter, a slice of cheese — the soul, you see, is better nourished when the body is content with little. Break it without ceremony, and listen to it sing under your teeth.

How it was made : Knäckebröd was baked twice a year, after the harvest, in huge batches that were stored for months threaded on poles under the ceiling — hence the central hole. It was the keeping bread of Swedish farms, eaten all year round.

The contemporary twist : Break it into irregular shards and stand them upright in a glass, like little abstract canvases — a nod to the large rolls of jute canvas in the studio.

Hilma af Klint · Charactorium