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If walls could speak...
Curator Ingela Broström, Gävleborg County Administrative Board,
Chair of the Swedish Association for the Preservation of Buildings
Jonas
Olsson in Fågelsjö was a very rich farmer. With energy and a head for
business, he had turned his farm, Bortom åa ("on the other side of the
stream"), into one of the biggest in the whole parish of Los. Like many
other rich farmers, Jonas Olsson confirmed his status in society with
the title "lay magistrate". He made extra money by trading, and in his
leisure he practised his skills as a smith and carver of wood. He also
liked to read. The play "The Island of Felicity" shares the farm library
with more practical farming literature.
A farmer of means had to have a farm which told everyone who he was.
That is why Jonas worked busily to build houses and improve those he already
had. The farmers "on the other side of the stream" had long had a nose
for new fashions in building. The first shingle roof in the Los area was
put on here and they were also early in building two-storey houses. So
of course one had to keep up with the times when decorating. So Jonas
had the whole two-storey house, built by his father and grandfather, decorated
from scratch. It took place in stages, but with the help of one and the
same painter. Time and again, the painter passed Fågelsjö on his annual
trek from Rättvik to Lillhärdal and time and again he stopped at Bortom
åa to paint. The people of Lillhärdal never called him anything but "Hundrom"
but his paintings were signed with his real name - Bäck Anders Hansson.
In 1863, the decorative ideals of the new age made their entrance into
Bortom åa. Bäck Anders had by then been to the farm several times. In
1856, he had decorated the salon with gay rose paintings in strong colours.
He had stencilled the porch and kitchen, and put up wallpaper in a couple
of rooms on the bottom floor. But it was now time for a bolder move. One
of the rooms in the upper storey was to become something nobody in the
district had ever seen - three small rooms for guests. Neither rose painting
nor stencils suited Jonas Olsson's new bourgeois decorating ideals. All
that would do in this case was printed wallpaper.
In
September 1863, the wallpaper was sent from the trader Trolin in Edsbyn;
three patterns in three different price brackets. One even cost so much
that Trolin, excusing himself, wrote an accompanying letter saying "if
Jon Olsson should find no. 314 too expensive, the same may perhaps be
returned". One understands why when one realises that the price,
one riksdaler and twelve shillings, roughly corresponds to the price of
a sheep - per roll!
Today, we can clearly see which wallpaper this was, because in the hand-printed wallpaper of the 19th century, price and quality went hand in hand. It is the shimmering, ultramarine noveau-rococo wallpaper with the shiny silken base, in the farthest room. It made the room a highly suitable environment for the most prominent guests, perhaps the bailiff or the vicar. And still, the room is an excellent example of how the farmers used the luxurious wallpaper in their own idiosyncratic way. Here, the ultramarine of the wallpaper is bordered by a bright pink, tempera-painted wainscoting with Bäck Anders' characteristic spatter painting in black and white, far from the discreet skirting of the salons of the bourgeoisie. A meeting between cultures feels fresher than all the purity of style in the world.
