At Bergdala museum of glass technology the visitor is encouraged to try all the machines in the collection. Most of them are heavy to handle and bear witness to the hard working life of the glassworks workers. You can read more about the machines on the museum’s website.
The Youtube video entitled Pantograflyftet 2015 09 30 (the Pantograph Lift 30 September 2015), represents the starting point for Bergdala museum of glass technology according to Kerstin Fröberg and Björn Zethræus. Visit the museum’s YouTube channel to learn more about the machines in the collection.
Bergdala museum of glass technology displays a technical and embodied history of design, told through the equipment used in early mass production and decoration of glass. (Re-)learning the Archive met with Kerstin Fröberg and Björn Zethræus who manage and showcase the museum’s collection.
Tell us about Bergdala museum of glass technology?
The whole thing started when the society Glas i Hovmantorp (Glass in Hovmantorp) managed to track down Kosta glassworks’ old pantograph. In 2015 we were given access to the old glass grindery behind the glassworks and since then the museum has developed to include a growing number of machines. The society Glas i Hovmantorp was disbanded in 2019 and instead a foundation was set up in 2020.
The idea behind the museum is to present the technical development that made the Kingdom of Crystal economically successful in the early 20th century. By that we mean the hard technology. Techniques for blowing art glass is something completely different, we wanted to focus on the mass production of glassware.
When visiting, we were obviously struck by the pantograph. What sort of machine is that and what did the work look like for the person operating it?
A pantograph is a machine that prepares a certain number of glasses for etching. A pattern plate is placed on a drawing table and the pantograph operator follows the patterns of the plate with a needle. A more detailed description can be found on our website which also includes more about the pattern plates that were found together with the horizontal pantograph in Kosta.
There is not a lot of literature on the machines used at the glassworks. What we know is what we have been told. But because we have a pantograph and know how it works, we can figure out how the work around it must have happened. Visitors to the museum also get an understanding of it as all the machines in our collection can be handled. Based on photos from the 1950s of glassworkers without protective gear, tales by glassworkers and the fact that the etching bath is made up of hydrofluoric and sulphuric acid it is safe to assume that the work environment around the pantograph was not the best.
Continue reading “Bergdala museum of glass technology”Pyrography on birch by Tuomo Nieminen
Our logotype was made in collaboration with the glass artist Tuomo Nieminen who created its font and motif. For many years he was a glass blower at Bergdala as well as Kosta glassworks. Tuomo Nieminen’s unique ability to sculpt glass has always been a prerequisite for much of the glass art that was created there. During a period of time, he was unable to practice his craft but his creativity and desire to create found other outlets. One of the expressions he tried was to make drawings using a pyrography pen. These often depict scenes from the forest, reflecting Tuomo Nieminen’s passion for hunting.
Its form references the classic birch board picture. This was a type of souvenir, created by gluing a postcard to a board of birch wood, often with painted details. They were usually made by travellers but also by socialists who were blacklisted after trying to unionise their workplaces. You can learn more about the history of the birch board picture through P1’s amazing program Loppmarknadsarkeologerna (the flea market archeologists, in Swedish).
Picture: Sketch by Tuomo Nieminen
On the map you see the many different museums that (Re)-learning the Archive is working with to build new design historical pathways. Via this map you will be able to follow how we stich a multitude of places, stories and perspectives together in order to create a kaleidoscopic design history. The map will indicate where these interesting places and museums are. In the Swedish version we have digital papers, “one page histories”, from these places and museums.
This website functions as an archive. In (Re-)learning the Archive we don’t collect quiet objects, but rather collaborations with places, people and organisations. We are in the process of translating this so it will be accessible for you too. In the meantime, if you want to have more information about any of the places and museums on the map you are more than welcome to contact us on: maija.zetterlund@designarkivet.se
Warm wishes,
(Re-)learning the archive
In November 2021, (Re-)learning the Archive, with support from IASPIS, met seven design practitioners from different places in Sweden and the world. Inspired by the journalist, writer and activist Elin Wägner’s work, we reflected on possible sustainable futures. Below is the invitation that was sent out to the participants.
You are cordially invited to a three day online/onsite workshop in November 15-17th of November, 2021, at Lilla Björka in Småland, Sweden. It is a workshop that is staged within the framework of the project (Re-)learning the Archive, a three-year project aiming at re-learning design through formulating other histories and from here find seeds for possible sustainable futures. (Re-)learning the Archive argues the importance of place in understanding design, for specific knowledges and agency of local cultures. The county Småland in the south of Sweden is the place of (Re-)learning the Archive. Here we re-learn in collaboration with various places, with young and old with different interests and backgrounds. The specific site for this workshop is the house Lilla Björka located in the small village of Berg in the center of Småland. This house was built by the author, journalist and activist Elin Wägner in the 1920’s. From here she continued her activist work on women’s rights and pacifism that had previously mostly taken place in urban settings, but was also broadened by intersecting with an engagement with the rights of nature. She had a particularly keen eye to worms and trees. Wägner integrated observations of industrialisation, patriarchy and militarization through efficiency-seeking agriculture and turned to one of her creative expressions of imagining otherwise through writing fiction. She drew long temporal and geographical lines as she connected with myths and histories in her speculations on how good life could be lived for humans and other species.
Continue reading “An ecofeminist history – workshop at Elin Wägner’s Lilla Björka”
Miranda Moss
Miranda Moss is a transdiciplinary cultural worker from Cape Town, focussing on socio-ecological sustainability through exploring the problematics and hopeful possibilities of technology. She has exhibited, performed research, made a mess, and given lectures and workshops across the globe in various art, science and public spaces, and has just embarked on a 3 year long research project titled “Regenerative Energy Communities; artistic and collective energy experiments for resilient agriculture” funded by the Swedish Energy Agency’s Program for Energy, People and Society.
Maja Söderberg
Maja Söderberg is an entrepreneur who lives and works in Tolg, a small village north of Växjö. She works with sustainability issues that are often based on food from both a consumer and producer perspective, but also questions about how we can transport ourselves sustainably and how we can reach a more open society. For several years she has lectured and trained on sustainable food, has written sustainable cookbooks and is one of those who run Nybrukarna, one of the first CSA (community supported agricultural) farms in Sweden. For her, sustainability must not only be an ecological issue but also a social one. For the moment she works part time with Save the children with integration questions and part time Nybrukarna were she, among other things, develops the CSA method.
Katarina Bonnevier
Katarina Bonnevier is an architect, artist and one of the founders of the art-design and architecture group MYCKET. She is currently working with the artistic research project Troll Perceptions in the Heartlands. In her work she is primarily interested in the borderland between the created and the living world and how the things we make, as humans, can support a more respectful world and way of living.
Franca López Barbera
Franca López Barbera is an Argentinian designer and researcher based in Berlin. Her work explores the intersection between nature, coloniality, gender, and ethics. Her current research builds on the introduction of consent in design-nature relationalities against extractive regimes. Prior to this, Franca has straddled several professions, working with various design practices, art studios, non-profits, and academic institutions. This year, she was the curator of the Argentinian pavilion at the 2021 London Design Biennale.
Anna Johansson
Anna Johansson grew up in the small town of Värnamo that despite its small size has been full of creative souls that enriched art and design in Småland. She has a bachelor’s degree from Linnaeus University Design +Change. Sustainability has been the focus in her practice, something that she weave’s into her own diverse craft that she practice through ceramics, crochet, textiles, illustrations and whatever she find inspiring. Currently she is working at Vandalorum i Värnamo as well as holding evening classes in art and design for children and teenagers. Previously she has worked with activities aimed at people with cognitive disability and prior to that she worked for many years as a carpenter.
Andrea Botero Cabrera
Andrea Botero Cabrera is a Colombian-born, Finland-based designer and researcher. Her design works explores technologies, services, and media for collectives and communities. Through her research work she aims to understand how collectives come to understand the design spaces available to them and how designers could support infrastructuring processes around those spaces. Andrea has a Doctor of Arts (DA) in New Media, an MA in product and strategic design from Aalto University, and a BA in Industrial Design from Universidad Nacional de Colombia. She works as Research Fellow at the School of Art, Design and Architecture in Aalto University (FIN) and is also adjunct professor at the Universidad de Los Andes in Colombia (COL).
Bianca Elzenbaumer
Bianca Elzenbaumer is a design researcher based in the Italian Alps. She completed her doctorate at Goldsmiths, University of London, in 2014 with a research on precarious working conditions and on how to mobilise design to undo them. Elzenbaumer is a founding member of the design practice Brave New Alps. As a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at Eurac Research (IT) she coordinates the Alpine Community Economies Lab. She is co-president of Cipra International, an NGO campaigning for the protection of the Alps. Her 40-year research plan focuses on supporting and creating community economies and commons starting from the places she lives in.
is a three-year long development project run by Designarkivet in Pukeberg with support from the Swedish Arts Council and Region Kalmar län (Kalmar County Council).
Christina Zetterlund
Project Manager
christina.zetterlund@designarkivet.se
Maija Zetterlund
Project Coordinator
maija.zetterlund@designarkivet.se
Virserums konsthall
Linnaeus University
Kalmar Konstmuseum
Designer in residence:
Evelina Mohei
Design and webb:
Mika Kastner Johnson
With support from
