Home and Market Jönköping Match Museum, Jönköping, Sweden, 2007 60 silver gelatin photos, a 10min 8mm film, costumes, matchboxes, text. The closed Jönköping Match Factory was by mid 19th century world leading in the dawning match industry. One of the factory buildings houses The Match museum, which possesses a photo archive covering the history of the factory. The archive lacks though pictures preceding 1870. This can be due to the fact that the photographical technology was new and undeveloped or that not until the 1870s were new and top modern machines introduced that motivated photo documentation. Documentation of the workers and in particular their domestic environment was of minor interest. Despite this the factory had, from the establishing in the 1840s, substantially more home- than factory workers. At the factory the home workers received paper and glue together with cut and carved aspen veneer. In the homes this material was made into boxes that were furnished with colourful labels and a striking surface of sand. Back in the factory the boxes were filled with phosphorous matches. They were poisonous and dangerous as they easily self-ignite. The homemaking of match boxes had a low status, something one rarely talked about, generally the wages for 1 000 boxes were only 1 krona. Matches were sold in small shops or at markets and it is most likely that street selling and home making were extra work. The exhibition Home and Market shows the documentation of production and selling of home made match boxes. Together with the museum’s staff, I have recreated a home working scene in the workman’s dwelling, which is reconstructed in The Match Museum. The idea was that this reconstruction could benefit the museums educational work. The model we chose to make is said to be one of the first that was made in the factory. It was introduced in 1847 and has the label text; JÖNKÖPINGS TÄNDSTICKOR. In those days the boxes contained phosphorous matches, which could be ignited onto any rough surface. As they nowadays are prohibited, we used modern “strike anywhere” matches instead. Our handmade boxes were then sold at Jönköping’s annual 19th century market, which is meant to depict a market from around the 1850s. By using old fashioned documentary technique, like black & white photography and substandard 8 mm film, my aim has been to create a substitute for the missing material. The exhibition also displays the few authentic pictures showing match workers, workman’s dwellings and market life from the mid 19th century. Today the demand and prices for historical hand craft is exceeding. Consequently events like historical markets have gained increased economical value, apart from creating experiences and describing history. Recreation of the past has often also a marketing effect on present time. From this perspective our project is not that much of escapism. Apart from being an experimental archaeology, it is “Learning by doing”, and in our fantasy a wish for a restoration of Jönköping Matches on a wider market. Martin Karlsson, september 2007
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