Gustaf Larsson (December 10, 1861 - July 23, 1919), Swedish educator and inventor, was born in Sweden but immigrated to the United States in 1888. His goal was to bring Otto Salomon’s educational “sloyd” - a Swedish manual training system with roots in the Swedish countryside - to America as an educational response to the changes brought about by industrialization. In the early nineteenth century, “domestic sloyd” in Sweden entailed crafting useful objects for the home such as tools, clothing, and utensils. These activities sustained peasant families and provided a form of practical education to peasant children.

In the late nineteenth century, Salomon, who would later become Larsson’s mentor, developed “educational sloyd” after realizing that the process of teaching sloyd had potential that extended far beyond vocational training alone. Although Larsson intended to stay in America for only a short while, his visit was extended indefinitely after he developed a professional relationship with Pauline Agassiz Shaw, a philanthropist with an affinity for educational programs. Like Larsson, Agassiz Shaw was a follower of Friedrich Froebel, an influential German pedagogue, and she was dedicated to implementing systems that promoted the underlying principles of Froebel’s kindergarten theory in her own school. In 1888, Agassiz Shaw chose Larsson to serve as the principal of the North Bennet Industrial School. There, he created a program called the Sloyd Training School of Boston, intended to train children and new teachers.

At the Training School, Larsson modified the Swedish sloyd system to account for the needs of American public school children. He changed the role of drawing in the sloyd curriculum, enforced Salomon’s idea that sloyd models could be modified according to the needs of everyday living in different locations, and expanded the types of media that could be employed to include forging, machine work, metal work, bookbinding, printing, cement work, and furniture making - each of which made the adaptation of the sloyd model to the American context much simpler. By 1917, the school reported that over 400 student teachers, from nearly every state in the country, had graduated from the Sloyd Training School. Larsson served as the director of this program until his death in 1919. Upon graduating, teachers who had trained under Larsson went on to create similar training schools and programs across the United States.

Larsson went on to establish ten centers in Southern India, and six in Mexico. While he was directing the Sloyd Training School, Larsson authored several books on sloyd and education. He also designed what is now known as the Larsson bench, manufactured through by Chandler and Barber to Larsson’s specifications, and still p[opular today among woodworkers and sloyd enthusiasts. He was a member of the Columbian Lodge, a society of masons.

In 1900, Larsson served on the staff of the Cuban Summer School at Harvard as an Instructor of Practical Exercises in Wood Work. After establishing a relationship with the Cuban teachers, the Commissioner of Education in Cuba requested that Larsson’s Sloyd Training School take six native Cuban teachers annually totraing as Sloyd teachers for the island.

Gustaf Larsson died in Boston on July 23, 1919 at 57 years old. He was remembered as “one of the few men that stand out” as the “makers of manual training” in the United States.