[1] Calla Curman was born on 12 November 1850 in Jönköping, Sweden,[2][3] the only child of wealthy industrialist Carl Frans Lundström [sv] and his wife Sofie Malmberg (1830–1897).

The educated Carl Curman, whom she had met on a visit with her mother to Lysekil during a few summer weeks in 1864, was invited to join them as a guide for the Italian trip.

In her justification for founding Nya Idun, Curman wrote: "Why should not we women too, regardless of our different political and religious views, be able to come together for a mutual exchange of ideas in common intellectual, artistic and literary interests?

The Curman receptions featured people such as poet Carl Snoilsky, artist August Malmström, mathematician Sofya Kovalevskaya, composer Laura Netzel, writer Viktor Rydberg, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and social debater Ellen Key.

[7] They returned to Lysekil every summer and Calla took long walks in the countryside, becoming particularly fond of Stångehuvud a short distance outside the town, where the granite cliffs were sculpted by ice.

By the early 1870s, quarrying had begun in Stångehuvud, which was hard on the Bohuslän cliffs at the time, with no regard for the area's unique nature.

Curman wrote several letters to the newspapers and to the leaders of Lysekil, asking firstly that stone mining should be stopped, but if it had to continue, it should be done more systematically and with greater care.

At the same time, the Carl and Calla Curman Foundation was set up to keep a watchful eye on Stångehuvud and to determine what care and maintenance measures should be taken to preserve and nurture the area.