EMBROIDERY
Handicraft skills were expected of all girls and young women from the age around ten onwards, regardless of class or birth. A middle-class girl had to demonstrate her skills and ability to be a housewife. Before making the actual trousseau, young women would make for her fiancé gifts of small embroidered articles such as wallets, calling-card holders, pipe-stems, tobacco pouches, slippers and braces. There was continuous demand for embroidered objects, as it was customary to make all the birthday and name-day gifts and Christmas presents for family and friends by hand.
Photo: Suomen käsityön museo / Riitta Chan
REED BANDS
Colourful bands and ribbons played an important role in popular dress. They were used as garters tied around the leg below or above the knee, and also as belts, shoulder straps for skirts and aprons, braces for trousers, as borders for garments and for tying shoes and other footwear. Strong colourful bands were also used as reins when driving to church or special festivities. The Sámi (Lapps) made shoe-bands and band belts. The bands were mostly reed bands.
Photo: Suomen käsityön museo / Elsa Silpala
WEFT THREAD
Weaving practised as a livelihood was based on home-grown flax, hemp and wool. But the process of spinning thread was slow. From 1860 mill-spun cotton yarn became available to weavers, and around this time the Tampere Linen Mill began to exchange flax fibres for linen yarn. Home-spun yarn and thread, however, still remained in use in fabric woven for domestic use. “Old Woman Spinning”, painting by Edla Jansson-Blommér
Photo: Suomen taiteen museon kuva-arkisto.
THE KORSNÄS SWEATER
The colourful woollen sweaters of Korsnäs, combining knitting and pattern crochet work were introduced in the 1850s. Requiring a great deal of work, the sweaters were festive attire for men and wealthy women.
Photo: Suomen käsityön museo / Raija Lundahl
THE ROCKING CHAIR
The spindle-backed rocking chair with lathe-turned legs and long rockers was in use throughout the country, in both the towns and the countryside. The spindle-backed kitchen chair, resembling the Windsor chair, became widespread around this time.
Drawing: Suomen käsityön museo / Anne Saarikoski
COPPER KITCHENWARE
Before the 19th century, kitchenware of copper was mainly used in urban households and in the countryside in the manors and homes of civil servants and officials. The only exception was the coffee-pot, which was to be found in even poor homes. The mid-19th century was the heyday of coppersmiths in Finland.
Photo: Tinaaja Toivo Mäkiö, SKM:n kuva-arkisto 1991, K0712/0005
FILIGREE GLASS
In the 1850s the Nuutajärvi glassworks became the leading facility in its field in Finland. The works hired German, French and Belgian glassblowers. Nuutajärvi began to make filigree glass alongside red, blue, violet, yellow and green glass. Painted glass was also manufactured.
Photo: Nuutajärven lasimuseon kuva-arkisto
TWO-STOREY DWELLINGS
Already in the mid-18th century two-storey dwellings were built in Southern and Central Ostrobothnia, but their heyday was from the 1860s to the 1880s. Ostrobothnian carpenters travelled in various parts of Finland, building large houses for wealthy farmers. The “joiner style”, referring to the division of labour, was also in use. The carpenters constructed the framework of the large dwellings, but the joiners made the decorative window casings, eaves, porch and interior fixtures.
Photo: Kari Hakli
