Sound recording of the belt driven workshop at Virserum’s furniture industry museum
At Virserums möbelindustrimuseum (Virserum’s furniture industry museum) we meet the process. We can see how furniture has been produced, the wood sawn, details carved, and how it has been put together to a finished piece of furniture. It is a history of work, but also of craftsmanship and technical development. The oldest machine in the museum is a foot driven frame saw from the 18th century which could be used for sawing curved lines.
The largest part of the museum is the workshop, driven by a water wheel which is kept in motion by the Virserum river. The forces of nature were a prerequisite for production. The workshop is driven by belts running across the ceiling. We can’t just see the furniture, but also hear the humming of the belts, the clatter of the machines and feel their vibrations. We get to experience what it was like to work in this noisy environment. On a post we find out that ear protection was unusual and that a hand or finger easily “got in the way of a blade, steel or cutters”.
We also get to know the skillful hands that created the handsome oak furniture. We meet the tools that carved their many details. To begin with, this was a task performed by the farmers in the area. They could increase their income by carving furniture details for the industry. This is why craft history in this case is not curtailed by industry. On the upper floor in the exhibition, we find a piece of elm furniture made by the farmer and carpenter Jonas Magnus Jonsson in Rödamossa. We are told that this piece is “a typical example of the amazing knowledge in the area which in many cases led to industries being started”. We also find an elaborate bed canopy which the wood sculptor Theodor Karlsson made for himself.
The working environment is from the Virserum company Karl Johan Ekelund, founded in 1883. It later became Oskar Edvard Ekelunds snickerifabrik AB, called the “Company” in the local vernacular. It was a company specialising in producing oak furniture – a more exclusive material. The establishment of Ekelunds led to more furniture companies establishing themselves in the area. In the heydays of the 1940s there were some 40 furniture factories in Virserum. The largest in the area was of course Ekelunds, with 240 employees at its height, while close to 500 people worked in the rest of Virserum’s furniture industry. Many of the companies made a wide range of furniture, but there were also more niched producers such as Klackfabriken (heels for shoes), Virserums stoppmöbler (upholstered furniture) and Vilhemssons stolfabrik (chairs). Over time, business waned and many of the companies in the area closed in the 1970s.
Föreningen Träarbetarnas museum (the Society of the Wood Workers’ Museum) was founded in 1983 and in 1989 it opened Virserum’s furniture industry museum. Because of the closures of the previous years, the society’s members saw a need for documenting and preserving memories of the local industry. The museum premises used to be a water driven saw at Ekelunds, situated on the property where “Bolaget” (“the Company”) had their factory buildings.
