Bostadskultur, informationsflöden och hantverkare 1740-1820 med utgångspunkt i Bålby (Närke) och Skottsbergska gården (Blekinge)

Sammanfattning: The thesis Housing Culture, Information Flows, and Craftsmen 1740-1820 (Bostadskultur, informationsflöden och hantverkare 1740-1820) investigates two mansion houses – Bålby in Närke and Skottsbergska gården in Karlshamn – with the focus on craftsmen and their clients. This is in order to analyse the relationship between professional craftsmen in the capital and in other regions. The clients have also been analysed because the relationship between the individual and the home plays a central part in the study. Chapter I places Swedish housing culture in a wider context based on reference groups and channels of information. Chapter II looks at the circumstances and production of the two properties, examining the participation of the actors. The questions asked in chapter III seek a deeper knowledge of the social and cultural life in the home by interpreting the interiors in terms of plan, decoration, and preferred objects. The final chapter, chapter IV, deals with the craftsmen’s activities and social context and links power structures to patterns of consumption. Client, architect (or builder), and craftsmen are viewed in the study in a shared context since this constellation was the foundation for the early comfortable home. A completely new picture of the guild craftsmen outside the capital emerges from this study when they are analysed in a broader context. My study has shown that the established guild offices existed outside Stockholm already in the seventeenth century, in contrast to previous assumptions. The guild offices in southern Swedish towns have not been noticed or have not seemed interesting to researchers in the capital, for various reasons. I have sought to emphasize that there was extensive mobility across the borders – not just in the topmost strata of society but also in the guilds of trained craftsmen, which led to a constant flow of innovations and influences from various quarters. The sources show that Stockholm was not the only self-evident centre as regards geography and quality, as scholars in the capital have claimed. The location of the southern Swedish provinces, moreover, encouraged continuous networking with the continent. In view of the form of training, with an international network, it may be regarded as out of the question that there was any stylistic lag outside Stockholm in the craft groups that I have studied. The conscious demands for quality that the clients had for their homes serve as grounds for this conclusion.